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Childhood abuse may lead to depression

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Does a child, who has been neglected during the growing up years, is more likely to be depressed or show suicidal tendencies in later years? Researchers say yes.

Mental health is the latest danger looming large since Covid hit the world and isolation became the buzzword. With a spurt in the mental health issues ranging from suicidal tendencies to depression to anxiety to mania, it has surfaced as a silent monster that India needs to take head on.

One of the major challenges regarding mental health is that such conditions arise not due to any one problem or issue, but as a result of many issues, situations collected over a period of time. Psychologists have been working on listing out all such environmental and personal issues that are potential dangers to a person's mental health.

Childhood abuse may lead to depression

In one of the first-of-its-kind research, 34 quasi experimental studies involving over 54,000 people were analysed to look at childhood challenges and conditions and their link with mental health issues. The study wanted to analyse if abuse or neglect in childhood years have any direct impact in the later years or is it just an arbitrary link the world has known all these years.

Does a child, who has been neglected during the growing up years, is more likely to be depressed or anxious in later years? Abuse leads to a lot of issues but is it responsible for self-harm and suicidal tendencies as adults? The answer is - Yes, in both the cases.

What is childhood maltreatment?

Researchers defined childhood maltreatment as any physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect before the age of 18.

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Here is more about the study and what it tells about childhood challenges and mental health as adults.

Impact of abuse, neglect of a child

The research, which analysed 34 quasi-experimental studies involving over 54,000 people, was conducted by UCL researchers to examine the causal effects of childhood maltreatment on mental health and was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Quasi-experimental studies can better establish cause and effect in observational data, by using specialised samples (eg. identical twins) or innovative statistical techniques to rule out other risk factors. For example, in samples of identical twins, if a maltreated twin has mental health problems but their non-maltreated twin does not, the association cannot be due to genetics or the family environment shared between twins.

The researchers found that child maltreatment indeed had effects on the mental health of the individuals later. The neglect and abuse can have a role in internalising disorders such as depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide attempt. Such children may also grow up with externalising disorders such as alcohol and drug abuse, ADHD and conduct problems as well.

These effects were consistent regardless of the method used or way in which maltreatment and mental health were measured. The study further suggested that preventing eight cases of child maltreatment would prevent one person from developing mental health problems.

Dr Jessie Baldwin (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences), who is the author of the study said, "It is well known that child maltreatment is associated with mental health problems, but it was unclear whether this relationship is causal, or is better explained by other risk factors.

"This study provides rigorous evidence to suggest that childhood maltreatment has small causal effects on mental health problems. Although small, these effects of maltreatment could have far-reaching consequences, given that mental health problems predict a range of poor outcomes, such as unemployment, physical health problems and early mortality.

"Interventions that prevent maltreatment are therefore not only essential for child welfare, but could also prevent long-term suffering and financial costs due to mental illness." Dr Baldwin was quoted as saying in a report.

Nevertheless, the researchers also found that part of the overall risk of mental health problems in individuals exposed to maltreatment was also due to other pre-existing vulnerabilities such as poor socioeconomic background or certain genetic factors.

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Dr Baldwin said: "Our findings also suggest that to minimise risk of mental health problems in individuals exposed to maltreatment, clinicians should address not only the maltreatment experience, but also pre-existing psychiatric risk factors."

The study was funded by Wellcome and is in collaboration with King's College London, University of Lausanne, Yale University School of Medicine, University of Bristol and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust.

Govt is aware of the issues

While the government has been quite aware of the growing need to address mental health issues in India and even the newly introduced National Education Policy 2020 calls for a special emphasis on the physical and mental health issues of children, the road ahead is steep and long.

As per a report in The Indian Express, close to 12,526 students committed suicide in 2020, while 13,089 did so in 2021, according to the latest data from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Student suicides made for 7.4 percent to 7.6 percent of all suicides in the country between 2017 and 2019 and grew to 8.2 percent in 2020 and slightly decreased to 8 percent in 2021.

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