#37 - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Childhood

This month (MARCH, 2007) in Pediatrics - Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, new research is reporting that childhood stress related to traumatic experiences may cause changes in the brain.



This early study suggests that stress from trauma may cause a smaller hippocamus.

The hippocampus is part of your brain. It is buried deep in the forebrain (front). The hippocampus regulates emotion and memory.

Researchers are hypothesizing (educated guessing) that these brain changes may cause a childhood trauma survivor to have less physical resources to respond to stress.

If you are under stress...

you need your hippocampus to help you control the overwhelming feelings of anxiety.

If your hippocampus has been damaged by earlier trauma experiences...

you have less to work with and ,therefore...

the stress is more anxiety provoking.

So the theory would be that if you have survived a childhood trauma and suffer with post-traumatic stress disorder, your brain has undergone changes. These brain changes make you have a much more difficult time controlling anxiety than someone who has not experienced trauma.

Lest we forget, the brain is a body organ.

My opinion is that people are often shamed when they are having a powerful wave of uncomfortable emotions... and this makes facing the challenges of anxiety even more difficult.

Be gentle with yourself.

If you have had a traumatic experience, science needs time to catch up with what you probably already know.

Your ability to handle stress has probably been compromised by physical changes in your body.

There are medications that can help with this, counseling to help you cope and gain control...

and also lifestyle changes that must be made for the quality of your life to be the best it can be.

The new research did discover that cortisol levels are effected in children who have PTSD.

Cortisol is commonly called a "stress hormone".

Corisol effects blood pressure, insulin, blood sugar, and how our body metabolizes fat and carbohydrates.



If your body can not use cortisol (the "stress hormone") properly...

you may encounter high blood pressure, challenges with blood sugar and weight gain.

Some resources also suggest that cortisol problems may lead immunity diseases.

Regarding this study and this blog summary...

readers need to understand that this is a VERY SMALL research study. Only 15 children were test subjects.

That is called a small sampling. For more thorough research... you really need a much larger group of people to participate in the study.

Researching children for any scientific endeavor is EXTREMELY challenging.

Scientists must be careful to do no harm to their test subjects.

So researching trauma in childhood is complicated.

Scientists can only research children who are in saferty, and who will not experience any harm from being researched.

This is one of the many reasons why medical research appears to be so slow for childhood physical and emotional challenges.

That being said...

I think this early result is promising for many trauma survivors.

First of all, just knowing that your body has been physically altered by experiencing an emotional event can be VERY validating.

You are not crazy. You are not over reacting. Yes... life is more challenging for you because something in you has been altered that should not have happened.

And in regards to child abuse prevention and intervention...

with scientific data to back up what frontline child abuse workers and advocates already know...

the way is being paved to increase funding towards protecting children and offering compassionate support to helping communities raise their children.

Loretta Kelly, MSW




RESOURCES:

Here is a summary of the original research:

Stress Predicts Brain Changes in Children: A Pilot Longitudinal Study on Youth Stress, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and the...

You can read news coverage of this research here:

BBC NEWS Health Stress may 'damage child brains'

HIPPOCAMPUS:

Hippocampus definition - Medical Dictionary definitions of popular medical terms

CORTISOL ("stress hormone"):

cortisol: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

Stress and Weight Gain Information by MedicineNet.com