Jahnavi Sarma
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Early childhood trauma increases the risk of premature death in early adulthood, i.e., between 16 to 36 years of age.
All children deserve a happy childhood. This is the time when they explore the world with open-eyed wonder and the environment in which they are raised can have a profound effect on them throughout life. In many ways, our childhood lays the foundation of our health in adult life. It is central to our physical and cognitive development. If this development is disturbed, it may have long-term consequences for our physical and mental health later in life. Hence, it is the duty of every parent to ensure that their child enjoys a happy childhood. But, unfortunately, not everyone is lucky enough to have an uneventful childhood. Many kids have to go through adverse circumstances and have a traumatic childhood, which may leave a long-lasting effect on their mind.
A new study at the University of Copenhagen, The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, says that social adversity in early childhood appears to be a significant risk factor for death in early adulthood. According to researchers of this study, children who have experienced repeated serious adversity such as losing a parent, mental illness in the family, poverty or being placed in foster care have a 4.5 times higher risk of dying in early adulthood than children who have not experienced adversity during childhood.
Early childhood trauma increases the risk of premature death in early adulthood, i.e., between 16 to 36 years of age. To arrive at this conclusion, researchers recorded social and stressful adversity in childhood among one million Danish children. For the purpose of the study, they divided the children into five groups depending on the degree of adversity experienced in childhood. They saw that the more stressful experiences they have experienced during childhood, the higher the mortality rate in early adulthood. For the most vulnerable children, the mortality rate is 4.5 times higher.
The higher mortality rate mainly manifests itself in suicide and accidents, but the study also shows a higher risk of dying from cancer in this group. Researchers say that the results of the study stress the critical importance of broad structural public-health initiatives to reduce stressful adversity in childhood. For example, prevention of childhood poverty and other adversity in childhood. With time, it may help reduce social inequality in health.
The size of this novel study has made it possible for the researchers to study the associations between incidents of social and stressful adversity throughout childhood and how it affects mortality rates among young adults. They define social adversity as financial poverty or long-term unemployment in the family, while stressful adversity includes death of a parent, divorce or alcohol and drug abuse among the parents.
(With inputs from Agencies)