Really? They had to do a study to figure this out? If mental disorder is hereditary, then the traumatized child has a greater chance of being raised by a mentally unstable parent. I can see why they grow up to have mental problems themselves. And who you are as a person develops in your childhood. Abuse and neglect shape that. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adults in treatment for severe mental disorders report greater levels of childhood stress than adults without psychiatric disorders, researchers from Germany found in a study they conducted. A burgeoning number of studies suggest that adverse or traumatic experiences during childhood influence adult psychopathology, Dr. Brigitte Rockstroh, of the University of Konstanz, and colleagues note in the journal BMC Psychiatry. They sought to further clarify this influence by comparing lifetime stress levels among 96 adults with major depression, schizophrenia, drug addiction, or personality disorder and 31 non-psychiatric adult subjects. The investigators used two stress screening scales to measure adverse experiences when study participants were younger than 6 years (early childhood), before the onset of puberty, and during adulthood. Rockstroh's group found indications that childhood is a critical developmental period, in that all study participants showed negative effects related to high stress levels during childhood and before puberty, but not adulthood. Psychiatric patients, however, appear to be more negatively affected by early life stress, as they scored about 4 and 6 points higher in measures of early childhood and pre-pubertal stress, respectively, relative to non-psychiatric subjects. Yet, measures of adulthood stress did not differ between groups. Moreover, the researchers report a "dose-effect" - a relationship between the amount or severity of early life stress and adult psychiatric problems. This relationship was not restricted to traumatic experiences and post-traumatic stress disorder, but appeared to vary between types of psychiatric disorders. For example, they found childhood stress levels most pronounced among patients with personality disorders. The investigators say additional research is needed to clarify of the association between early life stress and psychiatric disorders in larger groups of patients. Meanwhile, "we can only speculate that early life stress interacts with disorder-specific factors," Rockstroh and colleagues surmise. SOURCE: BMC Psychiatry, July 2008
Look up Albert Fish on Wiki. His family had a long history of mental disorders and he was beaten frequently as a child as a result. Of course he then turned out to be one of the most deranged adults in history. Then of course if you ever read the prequel to 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Brontë - 'Wide Sargasso Sea' - it makes the point that there is no such thing as hereditary madness. Only that madness surrounds the insane, in themselves and in the hostility and ridicule of others, which must of course affect any child it touches. Although they were still using leeches to cure fevers back then, so I don't have much confidence in her scientific knowledge Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
orelander your assuming the only abuse comes from those biologically related to you. School bullies are probably compleatly unrelated yet can cause as much psycological damage
It's the old Nature/Nurture argument. I argue both. The best case studies are among adopted children. Dad was bipolar, drank too much and wrapped his car around a tree. Baby was born, sent off to live with decent, hardworking, loving, typical Suburban Protestant parents in a perfect little neighborhood. Child grows up to be bipolar anyway. I made that up, but I've seen cases like that in my own life - clear indications that nature is at work, regardless of the environment. On the other hand, I've seen nurture as just as powerful an influence. Sex abuse follows patterns through families. Kids removed from would-be sex abusing situations grow up normally. Those left behind turn out to be sex abusers themselves. It would be interesting I'm sure to look at patterns in families otherwise unaffected by sex abuse when it is introduced by an outside party, like a camp counselor or teacher. I would hypothesize that the abuse would then propagate through the successive generations.
