Impact

Conference addresses early life stress, maltreatment and trauma

Credit: Penn State / Penn StateCreative Commons

Abuse, neglect, the loss of a caregiver and other early traumas can have lasting impact that extends well into adulthood. Penn State’s Network on Child Protection and Well-Being’s fourth annual conference highlighted recent advances in long-term effects of early life stress, maltreatment and trauma.

According to Sandee Kyler, assistant director of the network, the conference brought together 15 top researchers in fields of psychology and neurosciences from institutions such as Penn State, Harvard and New York University, and from as far away as London and Berlin.

“The conference focused on the biological aspects of child maltreatment, highlighting resilience and reversibility,” said Kyler. “Trauma and stress can have a profound impact on the human body throughout one’s life, even impacting the next generation, making reversibility even more crucial.”

After opening remarks from Penn State President Eric Barron and Network Director Jennie Noll, four sessions covered endocrinology and immunology, brain development, genomics, and resilience and reversibility. Each session was followed by an integrative “translation” component where speakers discussed connections in the studies presented.

Andrea Danese, senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, spoke about the profound effect early-life stress has on immune and metabolic function, measured through inflammation of the liver. “This inflammation can cause depression in adults, leading to poorer diets, inactivity and harmful habits such as smoking,” he explained.

There are also neurobiological consequences of childhood trauma. Michael DeBellis, a child psychiatrist and professor at Duke, showed MRI brain scans of children who had been maltreated and exhibited post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms compared to children who had not been exposed to trauma .

“Children who are maltreated with PTSD symptoms have developmentally smaller brains – the earlier the trauma begins and the longer it lasts, the more affected the brain becomes in overall size,” he explained. Children with stunted brain development are at risk for addiction, depression, anxiety, diseases and social problems, as well as Alzheimer’s as adults.

Other research presented explored why some maltreated children are more resilient than others and developed strategies for positive change. Christine Heim, director of the Institute of Medical Psychology in Berlin and also a professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State, talked about how targeted early interventions for those at risk during pregnancy can prevent or reverse many of these negative effects.

“Ideally, we would start interventions as early as possible to try to prevent a trajectory that leads to disease manifestation, but first we need to understand the mechanisms, said Heim.

Ann Masten, Regents professor and Irving B. Harris professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, developed a class that emphasizes the importance of fostering at-risk children by offering interventions such as coping strategies for parents and children.

“By addressing stress levels in families, some of the effects of early trauma can be lessened,” Masten explained. “There are many roads to resilience, but it depends on the environments surrounding these at-risk families.”

The conference concluded with a panel discussion, allowing for interaction between speakers and participants.

The network was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the network was launched in Fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is a part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State.

 

Last Updated October 7, 2015