Thaindian News

Washington, Feb 6 (IANS) Children subjected to early abuse could suffer greater blues later in life, says a new study.
Children who experience maltreatment, including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or neglect, grow up with a lot of stress.

Cortisol, termed “stress hormone”, helps the body regulate stress. But when stress is chronic and overloads the system, cortisol levels can soar or plummet, which can erode development and health.

“In the United States, more than 1.5 million children are abused and neglected every year, though it’s estimated that the actual rates are substantially greater,” says Dante Cicchetti.

Cichetti is professor of child development and psychiatry at the University of Minnesota (U-M), who led the study.

Researchers from the universities of Minnesota and Rochester and Mount Hope Family Centre studied more than 500 low-income children aged between seven and 13 years.

About half these children had been abused and/or neglected. Researchers wanted to find out whether early abuse and depression affected their levels of cortisol.

High levels of depression were more frequent among children who were abused in the first five years of their lives than among maltreated children who weren’t abused early in life or children who weren’t maltreated at all.

More importantly, only children who were abused before age five and depressed had a typical flattening of cortisol production during the day.

However, other children, whether they were depressed or not, showed an expected daily decline in cortisol from morning to afternoon.

This finding means that the body’s primary system for adapting to stress had become compromised among children who were depressed and abused early in life, says an U-M release.

Early abuse may be more damaging to developing emotion and stress systems because it happens as the brain is rapidly developing and when children are more dependent on caregivers’ protection, say researchers.

The study appears in the January/February issue of Child Development.