How trauma will affect your child when they grow up
Children who had a traumatic upbringing are likely to have chronic pain related complications when they grow up.
What you need to know:
- Experiencing physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect as a child leads to costly chronic pains such back, neck pain and other musculoskeletal disorders into adulthood.
- Other pain related conditions cited by the scientists include chronic headache, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome and posterior pelvic pain.
Children who had a traumatic upbringing are likely to have chronic pain related complications when they grow up, a new study has shown.
The study, published in the scientific journal European Journal of Psychotraumatology, shows that experiencing physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect as a child leads to costly chronic pains such back, neck pain and other musculoskeletal disorders into adulthood. Other pain related conditions cited by the scientists include chronic headache, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome and posterior pelvic pain.
These experiences are called Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). “Adult patients exposed to ACEs may not be achieving optimal health outcomes due to the physiological and psychological effects of toxic stress,” shows the study.
Lead author of the study, Dr André Bussières from the School of Physical & Occupational Therapy at McGill University in Canada, said the results of the study are particularly worrying because more than one billion children — half of the global child population – are exposed to ACEs every year.
“This puts them at increased risk of chronic pain and disability later in life. There is an urgent need to develop targeted interventions and support systems to break the cycle of adversity and improve long-term health outcomes for those individuals who have been exposed to childhood trauma,” he said.
ProfJan Hartvigsen, one of the co-authors of the study, said there needs to be an urgency in addressing the issue because of the health risks it has in the future.
“A more nuanced understanding of the precise relationship between ACEs and chronic pain will empower healthcare professionals and policymakers to devise targeted strategies to help diminish the long-term impact of early-life adversity on adult health,” he said.
The scientists said the study helps clinicians to understand the need to broaden the associations between ACEs and chronic pain so as to prepare them in advance to provide trauma-informed care when offering pain management.
