Severe stress can damage a child's brain
Tim Silva
researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile
Packard Children's Hospital. The researchers found that children with
post-traumatic stress disorder and high levels of the stress hormone
cortisol were likely to experience a decrease in the size of the
hippocampus - a brain structure important in memory processing and
emotion.
Although similar effects have been seen in animal studies, this is the
first time the findings have been replicated in children. The
researchers focused on kids in extreme situations to better understand
how stress affects brain development.
"We're not talking about the stress of doing your homework or fighting
with your dad," said Packard Children's child psychiatrist Victor
Carrion, MD. "We're talking about traumatic stress. These kids feel
like they're stuck in the middle of a street with a truck barreling
down at them."
Carrion, assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the
medical school and director of Stanford's early life stress research
program, and his collaborators speculate that cognitive deficits
arising from stress hormones interfere with psychiatric therapy and
prolong symptoms.
The children in the study were suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder, or PTSD, as a result of undergoing physical, emotional or
sexual abuse, witnessing violence or experiencing lasting separation
and loss. This type of developmental trauma often impairs the child's
ability to reach social, emotional and academic milestones.
"We'd really like to understand why some children are more resilient
than others, and what the long-term effects of extreme stress are,"
said Carrion, who is the first author of the research, to be published
in the March issue of Pediatrics. "We know, for example, that these
children are at higher risk of developing depression and/or anxiety as
adults." ...cont.
http://www.thinkanxiety.org/article-2996101.htm
Tim Silva