Childhood Traumatic Events - Research Paper Example

The traumatic or stressful events that instill fear or low self-esteem in children might appear in any form, whether physical or emotional. Exposure to threatening events or stressful emotional dilemmas in the early years of life leaves a deep impact on the children’s minds and the after-affects are visible in the form of various psychiatric problems during adult life. Traumatic events can be of any type which the child faces in his early years of life. It can be sexual harassment, physical abuse, domestic violence, parental conflicts like divorce, and complexities in marriage or domestic violence against the mother. Natural disasters can also lead to tense events, for instance, losing houses in floods, hurricanes, or earthquakes and any traumatic accident or phase of war in the country can also leave a very strong impact on the child’s personality.

Ignoring or neglecting such incidents will not help the children but, instead, they will be continuously haunted by those events throughout their lifetime. Children might experience nightmares, bed-wetting incidents, slow developmental progress in learning to talk or acquire basic skills, and a lack of self-confidence and interpersonal skills. Thus, it is the duty of the parents that they should always try to counsel their children if they have experienced any stressful event in their life (Ford 2012).

The traumatic experiences, if left neglected, follow the children into their adulthood. According to research published in BioMed Central, adults with psychiatric problems show a positive history of negative experiences in their childhood or adolescence. The negative experiences that were analyzed included separation, parental loss, emotional abuse, trauma witnessing, sexual abuse, and other traumatic events. 192 adults with alcohol-related disorders, affective disorder, schizophrenia, and personality disorders were selected for the study and after a series of questions, the results were analyzed.

A majority of the adults with psychiatric problems showed that they had been exposed to some kind of stressful incident during their childhood years. The study establishes a strong link between childhood events and psychiatric pathologies in adulthood. Although there is not a direct relationship it has been observed that adults who are suffering from any mental disease or any psychological complication show positive childhood history of traumatic occurrences as compared to healthier adults (Saleptsi et al 2004).

The early years of life are very crucial and they affect the lifetime of an individual. Hence, parents should help their children either themselves through counseling or take the help of support services that provide professionals to deal with these matters. Traumatized children should be taught how to learn to control their emotions and build up their confidence, let out their negative emotions, and acquire a sense of safety for themselves (Ford 2012). Childhood traumatic events are a very serious matter and they should be handled with an equal amount of concern and care.