Studies have long linked childhood trauma to increased risk and occurrence of adult psychiatric disorders, but many of these studies were retrospective and relied on adult participants’ ability to recall events that had taken place decades earlier. To offset the risk of recall bias and forgetting that accompanies retrospective studies, researchers in the Great Smoky Mountains Study took a different approach: they tracked participants from childhood to age 30 through a series of regularly scheduled interviews. Their results, published in JAMA Open, not only confirm what retrospective studies have already found, but also account for childhood hardships like low socioeconomic status, family dysfunction or instability, and bullying by peers.
“Having looked at a lot of studies of early exposure to trauma, I can say that not all things that have a big impact in childhood continue to have an impact over time, so it was important that we test this stringently,” said lead author William Copeland, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington and an adjunct professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
The study, based in North Carolina, began in 1992 with three cohorts of children aged 9, 11, and 13 years, for a total of 1,420 participants. Researchers interviewed each participant and an accompanying parent figure every year until the participant was 16, and then interviewed only the participants thereafter until age 30. They assessed for childhood psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders, mood disorders, conduct disorder, and more. They also assessed for traumatic events such as violent death of a loved one, sibling, or peer; physical abuse; sexual abuse; serious illness; and serious accident, among others. The researchers found that by age 16, 30.9 percent of the participants were exposed to one traumatic event, 22.5 percent to two traumatic events, and 14.8 percent to three or more traumatic events.
[For more on this story by TERRI D’ARRIGO, go to https://psychnews.psychiatryon...76/appi.pn.2019.12b8]
To read the full JAMA articles see, Association of Childhood Trauma Exposure With Adult Psychiatric Disorders and Functional Outcomes and Social Injustice and the Cycle of Traumatic Childhood Experiences and Multiple Problems in Adulthood.
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