Psychological trauma in childhood and risk of serious mental disorder in adulthood

Research has been carried out to determine to what extent having suffered a psychological trauma in childhood influences the risk of suffering a serious mental disorder in adulthood.

The study is led by researchers from the Hospital del Mar Institute for Medical Research in Barcelona.

The work analyzes the fourteen reviews and meta-analyses published to date in specialized academic journals on this issue, and is the first to take into account the entire range of existing mental disorders.

The conclusion is that suffering a psychological trauma during childhood significantly increases the risk of developing a mental disorder when reaching adulthood. Specifically, up to three times.

In total, the studies analyzed collect more than 93,000 cases, which reveal a direct relationship between the fact of suffering a psychological trauma in a pediatric age and the risk of developing a mental pathology years later. “This is the strongest evidence to date that psychological trauma really is a risk factor for later suffering from a mental disorder,” says Dr. Benedikt Amann, lead author of the paper, a researcher at the Mental Health Research Group. IMIM-Hospital del Mar and the Mental Health Network Biomedical Research Center (CIBERSAM).

From left to right: Ana Moreno Alcázar, Benedikt Amann, Alicia Valiente Gómez and Bridget Hogg, from the research team. (Photo: Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute)

The most common traumas in childhood are emotional, physical and sexual abuse, as well as emotional or physical neglect and bullying, among many others. Having suffered one of these situations causes damage on a brain scale, a physical sequel, but also a psychological one, in the form of various disorders. In the case of emotional abuse, the most frequent trauma, is associated with the most prevalent disorder among the population, anxiety. But there is also a relationship between childhood traumas and other pathologies, such as psychosis, which is linked to all traumas, obsessive-compulsive disorder or bipolar disorder. In the case of borderline personality disorder, the risk increases up to fifteen times in case of having suffered a trauma during childhood.

Adult trauma is also associated with a four-fold increased risk of later mental disorder. Despite this, the researchers point out that the evidence collected in this type of pathology is less.

Study the biography of the patient

Given these results, Bridget Hogg, a researcher at IMIM-Hospital del Mar, psychologist and first author of the paper, believes that an approach to patients is needed that not only takes physical factors into account, but also their history. In this sense, “you have to accompany the patient in his biography, really review what has happened to him. Now we ask what is not working, but not what has happened in his life, because to do so, potentially painful issues have to be opened up and it is avoided” . The work has also highlighted the fact that other traumas such as catastrophes, violent deaths or family abuse can affect people, generating structural and functional changes in the brain that open the door to mental disorders in the future.

In addition, people with this type of pathology who have suffered previous traumas have a worse course of the disease. For all these reasons, Dr. Amann makes a call to action. “On the one hand, we have to treat the psychological trauma in our patients, but we also have to act in the political and social spheres to invest more in prevention. For example, helping families with education and establishing programs to prevent cases of bullying school, which is a very important risk factor for suffering a mental disorder, both for those who receive it and for those who exercise it”, he points out.

Researchers from the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, in Brazil, and the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona have also participated in this work.

The work is entitled “Psychological trauma as a transdiagnostic risk factor for mental disorder: an umbrella meta-analysis”. And it has been published in the academic journal European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience. (Source: Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute)