Early Childhood Trauma and the Impact It Has On Adult Relationships - Essay Example

Early childhood Trauma and the impact it has on adult relationships (emotional and psycho social) Introduction: Trauma can be described as a interruption of an affiliative or a relationship bond. If left unsettled or resolved past grief and psychological trauma has found to continually render its impact both during the childhood period and also as continual impacts on adult relationship causing a pain for the entire life. Many incidences have been reported where childhood traumas have been proved to create pain in adult relationship and social behavior. Thus childhood can be seen as a sensitive time where both the good things and the adverse things that happen found to leave a long lasting effect. The stress of childhood trauma was found to have an impact on emotional, behavioral, cognitive, social and psychological effects in both Childs early stages of life and also in their adult life. In adult life their found to cause potential and chronic, mental and psychotic problems, thus causing the individual their family, community and ultimately the joy and peace of life. (1) (Bruce D. Perry, 2002) Trauma its causes , biological and psychological effects: The Literature pertaining to the study can be studied under the following headings: Neurological aspects of trauma The Major Forms of Trauma in childhood: The main cause of childhood traumas may include Sexual or physical abuse. Turbulent upbringing. Separation from parents. Mental illness in parent. Conditions of exposure to terror and violence. Parting of beloved. (Ackerman ,1999) (2) The Impact of Trauma on child's brain development: Brain is a organ, that is designed to sense process, store, perceive and act according to information obtained from the world. To achieve this the brain has a hundreds of neurons and related systems that works as a process of modulating, regulating, compensating the control over the body. In the case of stress the homeo stasis is disturbed. It should be understood that stress means traumatic form of severe stress that the child would be unable to handle. Children when faced by moderate to predictable level of stress with the presence of caregiver is usually not much affected. So the dramatic rapid and unpredictable or threatening changes in the environment activate then stress response of central and phereparal nervous system. Thus the trauma throws the individual system out of equilibrium and intern the body rapidly tries to restore the balance, robbing the individual's normal state. The usual response of human brain when confronted with unbearable trauma is dissociation, hyper arousal (the state of hyper vigilance activating stress hormones more level) or a combination of both. Thus the survival strategy range from fighting, fleeing or give up or surrender reaction. The nature intensity and frequency or which depends on individual child. Following this the child enter the phase of posttraumatic period during which the mind and body slowly tends to come back. During this period the child moves from the brink of terror through fear, alarm, etc. The heartbeat, pressure and other physiciological adaptation normalize and hyper vigilance increases. Now the child goes through phase of fear and anxiety and the event gets played in the child's mind again and again trying to make sense of what has happened. This set of living and reliving experiences is called as intrusions - that process them for a long term as a memory that disturbs their adult life. (Bell, D., & Belicki, K. (1998). (3) Effects of Trauma on childhood period: The experiences leave the child with at times unusual visual auditory or tactile sensations. Disturbed sleep and food patterns are also altered. The child post trauma experiences persisting emotional behavior, cognitive and physiological science and symptoms - The posttraumatic stress disorder characterized by impulsivity, distractibility, attention problems, emotion problems, sleep problems, social avoidance, dissociation, aggressiveness, failure in school and delayed development. (Ford, J.D., & Kidd, P. 1998). (4) The effect of trauma on victims adult relationship: Post trauma the relationship of child with the close ring of adults is usually found to be altered when trauma is post by them. An interesting study done with individual who had childhood trauma due to sexually and physically abusive parents when presented with persons resembling them showed increase fear, tension and negative symptoms, confirming the facts that post trauma the child relationship with adults is affected to a larger extend.( Ornitz, E.M., & Pynoos, R.S,1989). (5) Long Term effect of Trauma: The exposure of child to trauma has a long say, gripping the life forever. The impact ranges from increased risks of heart disease, alcoholism, neuro psychiatric disorder and disorted relationship failure in sexual life. These people are generally seems to be with low esteem, and found usually to be the cases of alcohol and drug abuse to which they get addicted easily. The trauma has been shown to have a great impact on mental health of the individual, researchers linking trauma to adult life psychosis and Schizophrenia. Thus with this review of literature we have seen over all aspects about trauma its effect on the biological system and effect on social and psychological behavior of individuals over a long time. (Kathy R. Berenson and Susan M. Andersen,2006 )(6) Now let us take a case pertaining to a childhood trauma and its effect on social and psychological behavior in adults, detailing the method used for that study, reporting the findings and discussing the literature supporting it. The case selected: The relationship of childhood abuse to the impulsive and suicidal behavior in adults (social and psychological aspect) The objective of the study was to investigate whether higher frequency of childhood trauma is present in adults with high levels of impulsivity, aggression and suicidal behavior. Method: The method adapted for this study was to undertake a considerable sample size (here 136) of adult depressive patients, then assessing their trait impulsivity, history of aggression, number of suicide attempts and medical lethality associated with most lethal attempt. These variables were then compared between patients with child trauma and patients without it. The study was begun with the consent of the participants, excluding the factors of substance and alcohol abuse, neurological illness and other active medical conditions. The presence and severity of child hood abuse was accessed by personal interview and gewith questionnaire. The details of suicide attempts were collected from the life history, with the lethality measured with lethality measurement scale and suicide intent scale. The Brown -Goodwin Inventort reliability, measured the factor of aggression The results were compared using the student's t test that compared the demographic attribute, suicide, impulsivity, aggression and depression measure. Then a logistic regression analysis was performed. Results obtained:. The result obtained showed that the subjects who had abuse history were more likely to make suicide attempts and they possessed significant impulsivity and aggression scores. The logistic regression analysis showed that childhood abuse remained significantly linked with the suicidal attempts when the impulsivity, aggression history and border line personality disorder was balanced. (Beth S. Brodsky, 2002) (7) Discussion: The early childhood trauma has long been associated with suicidal behavior and destructive nature in later part of life .the individuals who had traumatized childhood showed a nature of high impulsivity and aggression. But the factor of impulse and aggression is not found to induce suicidal tendency. It can be summarized the physical and sexual abuse in child hood may be the factor that promotes these two traits. (Mann JJ, Waternaux C, Haas GL, Malone KM,1999) (8) There are evidences that point out that childhood abuse is the cause for early onset of suicidal thought. (Van der Kolk , 1991) (9) (Hamilton M,1960) (10), (Fergusson DM, Lynskey MT,1995) (11) Conclusion: The childhood abuse thus could be the factor for impulsivity, aggression and suicidal tendency. Thus this case study of effect of childhood trauma in adult life throws light on the nature and path of research done in this field. My opinion: It could be understood that "child is the father of man". The period of bliss in one's lifetime is the phase of the childhood. The trauma that is produced in that period is not only found to grip the childhood life style, but also on long term is found to paralyze the whole life. With the overlook on review of literature the long-term effect of trauma can be recognized. The future projects should aim at Researches that throws light on the exact way how trauma is linked to the mental illness Effective steps to be taken to reduce the impact of trauma Rehabilitation of children suffering from trauma Create public awareness about the long-standing effect of trauma. As a adage goes the achievements of mankind and advancement in technologies is of no great astonishment when compared to a person who had undergone childhood trauma walking normally. Bibliography: 1. Bruce D. Perry, 2002, Trauma and Terror in Childhood: The Neuropsychiatric Impact of Childhood Trauma, Handbook of Psychological Injuries: Evaluation, Treatment and Compensable Damages",American Bar Association Publishing 2. Ackerman, P.T., Newton, J.E., McPHerson, W.B., Jones, J.G., & Dykman, R.A. (1998). Prevalence of post traumatic stress disorder and other psychiatric diagnoses in three groups of abused children (sexual, physical, and both). Child Abuse & Neglect, 22, 759-774. 3. Bell, D., & Belicki, K. (1998). A community-based study of well-being in adults reporting childhood abuse. Child Abuse & Neglect, 22, 681-685. 4. Ford, J.D., & Kidd, P. (1998). Early childhood trauma and disorders of extreme stress and predictors of treatment outcome with chronic posttramatic stress disorder. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 11, 743-761. 5. Ornitz, E.M., & Pynoos, R.S. (1989). Startle modulation in children with post-traumatic stress disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 866-870. 6. Kathy R. Berenson and Susan M. Andersen,2006, Childhood Abuse Can Impact Victims' Adult Relationships,, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 11, 1509-1522 (2006) Beth S. Brodsky, Ph.D., Maria Oquendo, M.D., Steven P. Ellis, Ph.D., Gretchen L. Haas, Ph.D., Kevin M. Malone, M.D. and J. John Mann, M.D. , The Relationship of Childhood Abuse to Impulsivity and Suicidal Behavior in Adults With Major Depression, Am J Psychiatry 158:1871-1877, November 2001 7. Mann JJ, Waternaux C, Haas GL, Malone KM: Toward a clinical model of suicidal behavior in psychiatric patients. Am J Psychiatry 1999; 156:181-189[Abstract/FreeFullText] 8. Van der Kolk BA, Perry JC, Herman JL: Childhood origins of self-destructive behavior. Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:1665-1671[Abstract] 9. Hamilton M: A rating scale for depression. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1960; 23:56-62 10. Fergusson DM, Lynskey MT: Childhood circumstances, adolescent adjustment and suicide attempts in a New Zealand birth cohort. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 1995; 34:612-622[Medline] Read More