Childhood Trauma Causes Adult Mental Health Problems
"We envision a future when everyone
with a mental illness will recover"
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, 2003 USA
Adults who lost their childhood to pain, fear and isolation have to live with the ongoing physical, emotional and psychological effects of this abuse. What makes the impact even worse is that the biological, and thus very real, repercussions of their traumatic childhood are currently being at best minimised by society and at worst outright denied.
At the Project one of the most commonly reported places where such denial causes a huge amount of additional distress is that of the medical profession which consistently avoids looking at the roots of mental health problems and 'solves' them instead with drugs.
This denial of the impact of the past then effectively hampers, or frequently stops outright, a correct diagnosis which would have then led to an appropriate recovery program for that person.
The fact that an accurate diagnosis doesn't happen has such as a hugely detrimental impact on the survivor, and so hampers their chances of recovery, that I believe the current medical treatment of mental health issues can properly be recognised as in violation of Basic Human Rights.
Un-addressed Childhood Trauma Costs Millions
In a study of over 15,000 adults published in 2007 in The American Journal of Preventative Medicine, the link between childhood trauma and adults being prescribed drugs including antidepressant, anti-psychotic, and mood-stabilizing/bipolar medications was found to be up to 17 times higher in people who had had childhood trauma. The more types of childhood trauma each person had experienced, the higher the rates of mental illness and the more medication prescribed.
The Journal added:
"Moreover, the huge economic costs associated with the use of psychotropic medications provide additional
incentive to address the high prevalence and consequences of childhood traumatic stressors."
American Journal of Preventative Medicine
Volume 32, Issue 5, May 2007, Pages 389-394
Getting well
When someone has grown up within a severely dysfunctional family they will not have been able to avoid being damaged, it was not their fault and they are left with very real problems as a result.
What they now urgently need is for the impact of what happened to them to be properly recognised so that they can get the appropriate information, support and assistance that they need in order to recover.
See also what Charles Whitfield MD writes on Childhood Trauma and Mental Health