Stressful Childhood Causes Premature Dying

Children who experience verbal and physical abuse may be at significant risk of dying faster than peers who were not subjected to such treatments, a study finds. The paper reveals that beatings and curse words can take years of a child's life, and that those who went through six or more so-called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) before they turned 18 were 200 percent more likely to die ahead of time, as opposed to study participants who had not experienced ACEs while growing up. The new research was conducted on some 17,000 adults, LiveScience reports.

“Our hope is that, as a result of this research, child maltreatment and exposure to childhood traumatic stress in its various forms will be more widely recognized as a public health problem. It is important to understand that consequences to childhood trauma can extend over an individual's life,” says epidemiologist and study researcher David Brown, who holds an appointment with the Atlanta branch of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Details of the investigation will be published in the upcoming November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The data the researchers used in their study was collected from the archives of a Kaiser Permanente clinic in San Diego; and the information was collected between 1995 and 1997. The patients that got treated there were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their childhood, which also contained queries about the abuse, both mental and physical, they were subjected to as children. The participants were then followed until 2006, and researchers tracked down who had died in the meantime using the US National Death Index, which centralizes such information.

In addition to direct abuse, the researchers also sought information about other influences as well, such as if the children had witnessed domestic violence, if family members consumed drugs and alcohol, or if there was a history of mental illness in the family. Factors such as undergoing a divorce or having an incarcerated sibling or other family member were also taken into account, the scientists report. The study revealed that those undergoing six or more such ACEs died on average at 60, whereas those who reported no ACES died at around 79 years of age.

“The central message of the publications from the ACE study is that our children are confronted with a terrible burden of stressors that negatively affects their neurodevelopment, which leads to health problems and diseases throughout the lifespan. As a consequence, these stressors may cause them to die younger,” Bronw concludes.