14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new study, it would appear that inflammation stemming from psychological trauma has extremely long-lasting effects on the human brain. In the case of abuse kids, this type of inflammation causes mental and emotional problems during adulthood.
When properly controlled by the body, inflammation is a good thing. It represents the body's natural response to physical harm, and plays an important role in limiting the damages caused by injuries. Thus far, few researchers studied whether or not inflammation can be caused by psychological trauma.
In the study, experts determined that people who went through this type of circumstances as kids develop a type of depression that is extremely difficult to treat properly. Generally, people in this group respond very poorly to treatment, and have a higher chance of relapsing afterwards.
“It provides evidence that these inflammatory states persist for long periods of time and have important functional correlates,” explains Dr. John Krystal. He is the editor of Biological Psychiatry, the journal that published the research, PsychCentral reports.