The empirical evidence demonstrating that childhood adversity relates to mental health issues in later adulthood such as personality disorder, dissociative disorders, depression, and stress disorder. Many of these individuals self-harm and attempt suicide. References include The Wandering Mind Biever & Karinch 2012; Feeling Unreal Simeon & Abugel, 2006; Overcoming Resistant Personality Disorders Millon & Grossman, 2007. I hope this is helpful.

Dear William,

Thank you for your answer. Can you send me the exact bibliography of the literature you have cited?

greetings

Egon

Dear Egon,

I shall list the first three and three additional references. I have many more along with articles. If you would be interested I can though RG or to your e-mail.

Millon, T. & Grossman (2007) Overcoming resistant personality disorders: A personalized psychotherapy approach. New York, John Wiley & Sons.

Simeon, D. & Abugel, J. (2006) Feeling unreal: Depersonalization disorder and the los of the real self. New York, Oxford University Press.

Biever, J. A. & Karinch, M. (2012) The wandering mind: Understanding dissociation from daydreams to disorders. New York, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

Ross, C. A. (2007) The Trauma Model: A solution to the problem of comorbidity in psychiatry. Texas, Manitou Communications Inc.

Meares, R. (2012) A dissociation model of borderline personality. New York, W. W. Norton & Company.

Livesley, J. W. (2003) Practical management of personality disorder. New York, The Guilford Press.

I have a great interest in the role of child development and adversity as related to psychopathology. I hope this is useful to you.

Best regards,

William

Strong evidence for depression too, and much of the recent epigenetic literature has focused on the long-term impact of childhood adversity on gene expression, particularly for genes relevant to stress responsivity. It is a rare scenario where animal models concur with human epidemiologic data.

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your advices. I have two further questions:

- Do you know any literature about models of interaction of childhood adversity factors and protective factores; how are they interacting and how are they causing neurobiological effects?

- Second do we have, epidemiological, crosscultural data on the frequency of individual stress factors in different ethnic groups (sub) cultures.?

greetings Egon

Dear Anne

thank you for the link. We are doing empirical research about traumatization of children in multi-problem families (deprivation, neglect, abuse) and the development of symptoms and ego-structural disturbances along their further development. Second we are doing empirical research about treatment effects (therapeutic home-based treatment), comparing treatment and non-treatment groups (along the life span).

greetings Egon

Hello,

As you probably noticed, there are a great deal of articles that, given your question was phrased fairly loosely, are out there and may help you. But the best reference you received so far IMO is the one about gene expression. Overall, its been a difficult and uphill climb to see empirical, sound studies done by psychologists either trained in biology, genetics, etc. in addition to psych; or are part of a team of interdisciplinary scientists. Essentially questions similar to yours, that involve trajectories, resilience, developmental factors, interventions--typically found in dev. psych--have to be given up in order for psychology as a field to ever come close to knowing under what conditions individuals act, think, feel...develop, in short; and how is that development probably going to go? What will be the probable outcome, and what are our limits, whether we are diagnosing, treating or predicting? We seem, as a sub discipline, to be VERY attached to applying this type of question to almost every aspect of human development, always on the border of nature/nurture.

At this point, developmental epigenesis (the psychology phrase or view of epigenetics) is at the stage to warrant real attention and effort when discussing development, outcomes, etc. We as (possible) scientists need to be trained differently, and if that began tomorrow, it wouldn't be soon enough, so that we could begin to ask the questions in a manner that reflected the importance of gene expression in attempting to find answers, to get close to the truth. Most of us cannot honestly read and understand a genetics article on the topic, most of us are not trained in both areas (but I have heard numerous Ph.D.'s claim an interdisciplinary background because of one graduate biology course....out of 103 credits). Epigenetics is so new, and from the hard sciences, findings are being produced at an astounding rate (some scrutiny would be nice give the rate of growth and publication), and in psychology, I have begun to see some articles that reference epigenetics, incorporate it at will, or use it as a possible mediator/moderater. Very few of the authors are well trained enough to understand the basic results, the implications, the methodology, and what are the important, future questions. As a field, to accept human development has a biological component, a genetic component, in addition to a psychological (and I would add, a more universal, human component as the Sufi mystics describe) component. It is my opinion that given our very real deficit in methodology, esp., it seems too hard, too complicated to alter the basic structure of our approach. Truly even the articles that have made attempts (with a few exceptions, Gottlieb and Lickliter being two of them; but both men were very well trained with strong interdisciplinary backgrounds as well as having developed and used teams, then consortiums of fellow scientists. Their work is primarily at the stage of "look, we do have evidence but as a field we'll need to do X in order to take this any further ACCURATELY), have made them in ignorance of language, methods, purpose, and current state of epigenetics.

Unfortunately your question, esp. the second one where you introduced an additional level/factor, is based on this outdated structure, assuming you accept humans as beings that function based on multiple processes and inputs, from neuro, to repression, gene switches, the role of the environment and how even that is highly individual as conditioning is tied tightly to the CNS and variability in how a person is conditioned is well established, to biology, everything (ok, yes, everything as in everything different fields have 'discovered' over decades and named; a name, like "resilience" is the

ticket into garnering attention, but we shouldn't forget the name isn't the thing, and there are many more things yet to be uncovered and named, but they exist). So at this point, if you or your colleagues are unable to begin to explore the effects of gene expression and how switches can be 'environmental' OR 'from within the body', and accept even genetics can't offer any definitive material to answer a question about prediction (in fact, it appears that as much work as they are producing, it is mostly directed towards the detection, understanding and possible prevention of genetic disorders. It is going to be up to psychologists to educate themselves to the point they can consider developmental epigenesis when looking at child to adult trajectories.

Dear Kelly

Thank you for your contribution. I share your opinion about epigenetics. I want to add one example which demonstrates how SES influences DNA methylation patterns. There are largely unknow questions.

Tehranifar P, Wu HC, Fan X, Flom JD, Ferris JS, Cho YH, Gonzalez K, Santella

RM, Terry MB. Early life socioeconomic factors and genomic DNA methylation in

mid-life. Epigenetics. 2013 Jan;8(1):23-7. doi: 10.4161/epi.22989. Epub 2012 Nov

29. PubMed PMID: 23196856; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3549876.

greetings

Egon

Dear Lony ,

I am in the middle of reading the studies in English and I am finding them interesting and useful. I am very pleased that Personality Organization finds inclusion. Many results concerned with childhood adversity (abuse, neglect etc.) relate to personality disorder, PTSD, depression, self-harm, suicide. However, as you and your colleagues show there are many other issues that arise from adversity in childhood that result in adult isolative and other areas of concern for society to find some resolution to.

Kind regards,

William

Dear Hans,

Dear colleagues

Thank you for your contributions. I didnt already know the scientific Research of Masten AS and coAuthors. He is doing an interesting research because he is looking for empirical evidences about common components of models for resilience science, including dose effects, mediators and moderators, and the individual or contextual differences that predict risk or resilienc; to explain how adversity factores and resilience factors are interacting and to understand more about the pathways of developmental psychopathology.

We are prepairing analysis about n=700 (High risk families) to detect such common principles, moderatores and mediatores and pathways. Data collection will be completed by the end of 2014.

If anyone is interested to join us please let me know what you could bring to our network.

Greetings

Egon

Egon,

Have you considered looking at the role a person plays in a high risk family in your study predicting risk or resilience in concert with the genetic components? I don't think that you can divorce the two. I think that family dynamics can put a person at risk or encourage resilience depending on the role the individual is stuck with in the drama of family dynamics, in addition to the genetic factors. My area is molecular genetics of bacteria, although I feel that this knowledge that I have can be applied to humans.

Dear Egon,

I agree with Margaret concerning the interaction of family dynamics and genetics. However. I would add other external variables. For example, youngsters with a neurotic personality are prone to depression, low self-esteem and other psychological/emotional health issues. When such youngsters are bullied in school, at home they are more prone to suicidal attempts than and completion of suicide than other youngsters. Neurotic children and adolescents are generally silent about being bullied and so internalise their emotions. Many references to this can be found in the journals of adolescence, development psychopathology and so forth.

William.

Dear colleagues

Thank you for your contributions. I am sure that based on gene-environment interactions during critical phases of perinatal and juvenile brain development we have to respect that three hits are important: 1: genetic predisposition, -2: early-life environment, and 3: later-life environment): Tis is the common sense of the cumulative stress hypothesis stating that in a given context vulnerability is enhanced when failure to cope with adversity accumulates. Epigentic theories will get an increasing importance.

1: McGowan PO, Szyf M. The epigenetics of social adversity in early life:

implications for mental health outcomes. Neurobiol Dis. 2010 Jul;39(1):66-72.

doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2009.12.026. Epub 2010 Jan 4. Review. PubMed PMID: 20053376.

2: Daskalakis NP, Bagot RC, Parker KJ, Vinkers CH, de Kloet ER. The three-hit

concept of vulnerability and resilience: toward understanding adaptation to

early-life adversity outcome. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2013 Sep;38(9):1858-73.

doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2013.06.008. Epub 2013 Jul 7. Review. PubMed PMID:

23838101; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3773020.

3: Odgers CL, Jaffee SR. Routine versus catastrophic influences on the developing

child. Annu Rev Public Health. 2013;34:29-48. doi:

10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031912-114447. Epub 2013 Jan 7. Review. PubMed PMID:

23297656.

Greetings

Egon

Our resilience team is focusing on disturbances in social relations in adult life as the key mechanisms underlying poor health and mental health among those with histories of abuse in childhood.. Write back if you are interested in pursuing this line of reasoning..

Here's an interesting one.

Pawlby, mills, Taylor, quinton, 1997, J Adolescence, 20:633-44.

Adolescent friendships mediating childhood a adversity and adult outcome.

Yes indeed Lirio, there is evidence in the Child and Adolescent literature that young persons will disclose and discuss issues with there friends more readily than with adults, especially those in authority. Disclosures to parents about adverse events such as abuse, bullying and so on are extremely difficult. For example young persons when bullied make friends with others that are being bullied and seem to talk about the effects of bullying among themselves.

William

Egon,

     Having read all of the responses thus far, the one area that seems to be neglected with regard to response in your question is "Are there  cross-cultural differences" ?  This issue cannot be ignored, for in any trauma: It is the support a child receives that makes the difference in how they will or will not be able to recover from the trauma.  

     Adversities come in many forms in childhood: Losing a sibling, losing a parent, poverty, serious illness, Alcoholism or Drug Abuse in the nuclear family, sexual abuse by a family member, spousal abuse, child abuse, homelessness, food insecurity, loss of a supporting grandparent (s), frequent moves of the family, divorce, witnessing violent crimes, siblings involved in  gang activity, children forced into prostitution, forced child labor, children who must care for younger siblings due to absentee parents, bullying, and serious injury due to neglect to name a few.

     If we put aside genetics and all of the scientific factors that influence behavior and cognition in a child and focus on the influence of a supportive extended family or community, then we must include the cross cultural differences that influence how children process and recover from childhood adversity.  To name just a few cultures that take care of children who lose their parents: Koreans, Native Americans. Eskimo, and many African and Caucasian American families adopt children who are displaced into their nuclear families.  Many group-focused cultures, where the extended family is closer and takes a role in rearing children; offers children support in times of crisis.  Therefore, I believe it has been presented in many empirical journals that the support a child receives following a crisis makes  the difference in the outcome of recovery. Children are generally resilient when they receive supportive care from close family members and/or the community in which they are members of the "group or clan" of origin in which they identify.  This allows they to process their grief and continue their development into adulthood.

I agree with these comments Rebecca. However, there is also the issue of childhood trauma due to the ravishes of continued civil war. terrorist activity, and a constant state of unrest. It is possible that this trauma goes untreated for many children due to the share losses resulting from the struggles alluded too and a lack of psychological support.

William

Dear Rebecca

This is an important note. We can assume that the impact of childhood adversities is sub-additive and protective factors (family-realted and personal ressources) have subadditive buffering effects too. But there is still no longitudinal empirical research about the interactions of adversity and protective factors and their impact on the formation of symptoms. Or does someone know studies about this specific topic?

greetings Egon

Hello Egon,

I don´t know if it got already mentioned, if not and you haven´t heard about it: the ACE Study is very interesting: long term effects of adverse childhood experiences on later health problems.

see: http://www.acestudy.org/

Greetings Sabine

Dear Sabine,

Thank you for your contribution. I still know the ACE Study, but even this study does not  take into account the effect of protective factores.

greetings Egon