Abused Child = Combat Soldier?

Powerful new study...

How Abuse Changes a Child’s Brain

• By Brandon Keim 

The brains of children raised in violent families resemble the brains of soldiers exposed to combat, psychologists say.

They’re primed to perceive threat and anticipate pain, adaptations that may be helpful in abusive environments but produce long-term problems with stress and anxiety.

“For them to detect early cues that might signal danger is adaptive. It allows them to react, to try and avoid the danger,” said psychologist Eamon McCrory of University College London. However, “a very similar neural signature characterizes quite a few anxiety disorders.”

In a study published Dec. 5 in Current Biology, McCrory’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure blood flows in the brains of 43 children exposed to violence at home as they looked at pictures of sad or angry faces.

Previous studies have shown that abuse affects kids’ brains; as they grow up, abused children become adults with high levels of aggression, anxiety, depression and other behavioral problems. But according to McCrory, the new study is the first to use fMRI to study the form of those changes.

“Understanding the neural mechanisms might give us clues as to how someone’s future might be shaped by their experience,” McCrory said.

His team compared fMRIs from abused children to those of 23 non-abused but demographically similar children from a control group. In the abused children, angry faces provoked distinct activation patterns in their anterior insula and right amygdala, parts of the brain involved in processing threat and pain. Similar patterns have been measured in soldiers who’ve seen combat.

Another recent study found that depression in people who were abused as children is especially difficult to treat. McCrory hopes future work will give a more complete picture of abuse’s neurological effects — and, perhaps, the effects of interventions that help children heal.

“Can children change in response to an act of intervention? To a better home environment? We’re quite optimistic that’s the case, that this is reversible. But that’s something we need to test,” McCrory said.

Image: D. Sharon Pruitt/Flickr

Citation: “Heightened neural reactivity to threat in child victims of family violence.” By Eamon J. McCrory, Stéphane A. De Brito, Catherine L. Sebastian, Andrea Mechelli, Geoffrey Bird, Phillip A. Kelly, and Essi Viding. Current Biology, Vol. 21 No. 23, Dec. 6, 2011.

It shouldn't hurt to be a child...

Apologies for the delay... The past two weeks have been exceptionally busy.  Last night I gave a lecture on Child Abuse at the Kuwait Medical Association by the invitation of Kuwait Child Rights Society.  I will not present the full powerpoint here, but I will share the summarized list of preventative tips I found from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

*** Please note that even though the wording presented here by the American Academy of Pediatrics seems to suggest that abuse only happens to girls (using she/her), boys are just as likely to be abused. (I doubt that the AAP had meant to be gender specific)

• Teach your child about the privacy of body parts, and that no one has the right to touch her if she tells the individual not to do so. She should understand that some touching is "good" but some is "bad”.
• In early childhood, parents can teach their children the name of the genitals, just as they teach their child the names of other body parts. This teaches that the genitals, while "private" are not so private that you can't talk about them.
• Sit down with your child and explain various situations that might indicate that a possible child molester is making advances.
• Tell a child that a molester or abductor may offer her alcohol or drugs to reduce her inhibitions.
• Tell your child that threats from a molester or anyone else are against the law—"If you tell your mother what we did, I'm going to hurt/kill her"—and to tell you immediately about them.
• If your youngster is in a position to do door-to-door solicitation—perhaps selling Girl Scout cookies or collecting money for a newspaper route—have an adult go with her. Warn your child that she should never enter someone else's home unless an adult accompanies her. (More appropriately for us would be “Girgai’an time)
• Investigate whether your youngster's school has an abuse-prevention program.
• Monitor the activities at your child's child-care facility or summer camp. Participate in these activities whenever possible.
• Spend enough time with your child that she does not feel the need to seek the attention of other adults.

Let us all work on implementing child protection laws and building a supportive infrastructure in Kuwait

Try a little tenderness...

I have recently been contacted by Dr. Hind Al Mazeedi, president of Kuwait Child's Rights Society - Every child counts, and I was asked to give a lecture on child abuse; a topic that is heart breaking, but I am eager to do all I can to educate, heal and protect.

In my preliminary search for materials to use in my lecture, I came across a beautiful video that Unicef made and I wanted to share it with you...

I will share the lecture information with you in the near future...  

Be safe, keep your children safe, and fill your life with love...