Childhood stress contributes to adult depression, study finds

Growing up in a stressful environment isn’t conducive to becoming a well-adjusted adult. Studies have shown that people who were constantly stressed out during childhood have an increased risk of being depressed.

How exactly are the two related? Stress at a young age permanently alters the expression of a key gene in the brain, resulting in a lifetime of elevated levels of a hormone that contributes to depression, according to a study published this week by the journal Nature Neuroscience.

To figure this out, a team of German researchers stressed out baby mice by separating them from their mothers for three hours a day during their first 10 days of life. Other mice were kept with their mothers continuously, to serve as controls.

All the animals got blood tests when they were six weeks, three months and one year old. The mice that had been removed from their mothers’ nests had higher levels of the stress-related hormone corticosterone circulating in their blood than their counterparts, the researchers found. When the animals were subjected to stressful situations, the traumatized mice also produced more corticosterone than the controls.

The researchers, from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, found behavioral deficits in the stressed-out mice too. They were more likely to freeze up in forced swim tests, and had memory problems with certain tasks.

The researchers traced these problems to decreased methylation of a key section of the AVP gene, which prompted the mice to make too much of the hormone arginine vasopressin.

To confirm that arginine vasopressin was responsible for the stress, the researchers gave the mice a drug that blocked the hormone’s effects in the brain. When the drug was working, the stressed-out mice produced normal levels of corticosterone.

“Our results suggest that adverse events in early life can leave persistent epigenetic marks on specific genes that may prime susceptibility to neuroendocrine and behavioral dysfunction,” they concluded.

-- Karen Kaplan

Comments

[Robin Phillips]

Interestingly, on the same day, the Times carries this article along with the piece on child trafficking. Adopted children, especially internationally adopted children, don't do very well without significant family support. Refer to Patty Cogan, MA, Ed.D, "Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child" and Bert Hellinger "Love's Hidden Symmetry" and the chapter on parents and children. It would be useful to prospective adoptive parents to have a more complete picture of adoption and the effects on the child and family prior to committing to adopt.

[Dr. Fran Walfish]

As a leading child and parent psychotherapist based in Beverly Hills, CA, I concur with these findings. Children who endure high levels of stress and are not treated and given alternative ways of understanding, talking, and dealing with the stressors have only two ways to go - either act-out aggressively or become depressed. These children grow up to be either depressed adults or troubled adults who get into troubled.

Child psychotherapy has great value with these children for prevention of future problems and diagnoses.

DR. FRAN WALFISH
franwalfish@sbcglobal.net

[lisa duran]

duh...

[Diamond]

I could remember having anxiety after my dad left me and my two siblings when I was ten. Because my mother was put in a stressful situation of having to take care of three kids with no job, she passed along her emotions to us, but I felt it the worst because I was the oldest. That anxiety went on until I graduated high school. But as I grew into my my adulthood, I had bouts of severe depression, extremely low self esteem and my future looked black. Every decision I made was a result of my low self esteem. I had a daugher when I was 21 which only made matters worse and I passed on my depression to her--which she now battles with. I do everything I can to help raise her spirits and although she knows I am a different person now, the damage has been done, I hope that she will be able to find her way out of depression.

Although it was not easy, I was able to turn my life around, it took a lot of years, but I began to read books about other women who dealt with self esteem issues and I joined a Christian church which really helped me. It still is not 100% easy, but I am a better person today, then I was as a young woman.

[Douglas Husbands]

Elevation of the stress hormone cortisol in childhood not only leads to increased adult depression, but also increased adult obesity. In particular the weight gain is around the trunk and midsection, called truncal obesity. Truncal obesity is associated with many more health problems than weight gained primarily in the arms, hips and legs.

This can be influenced by making beneficial nutritional changes in the child so as not to predispose to problems later. Increasing the amount of dark green leafy and brightly colored vegetables, taking a high quality children's multivitamin with high levels of B-Vitamins and folic acid, and using supplemental fish oil for the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA.

Even in the adult with depression, using the nutritional factors listed could have a beneficial therapeutic effect.

Dr. Douglas Husbands
www.drhusbands.com

[I knew it]

Now you tell me.... well, there's another piece to the puzzle. After having endured living in a home of domestic violence for the first 7 years of my life, this definitely rings true with me. What makes it even worse was that at the young age of 5 & 6 I would actually try to help my mom to "fight" my dad (I know it sounds horrible) who would beat her when he was drunk. This also contributed to my anger issues throughout school. I thought I'd left that behind as I grew, attended college, had a child, etc., but at the age of 38 can remember it like it was yesterday. Thanks for confirming what I already knew.

[Vicky Rathje]

I hope every teacher, principal, school board member and parent of school children read this study. Our school system is creating significant stress as the curriculum becomes more narrow focused, eliminating creative subjects and physical activities that reduce stress. Ironically these subjects also improve focus and concentration. We have two children in our family who have been diagnosed with depression as a result of educational stress. One gifted honors student, one highly intelligent student with a reading difficulty. (There is no familial history of depression.) Schools should have a mission to prepare children to live their best lives, not produce stellar test scores.

[Heather]

If you want to express an opinion about a news story, comment here. If you want to publicize your services, take out an ad.

[allaire]

Which is why we should have zero-tolerence policies in our schools. Everyone has to learn and test, but when it goes too far and for too long it's destructive. All of my delevelopment years were spent in a war zone overlooked and dismissed by every adult. Had it been different I may have had to spend much less time and a lot of money and many, many hours of work trying to work through it. Medication is only good if you can tolerate it and if it doesn't alter the rest of your body in bad ways, which they can do. It's good to have a clearer reason for what we sort of already knew.

[ucrsue]

My father was in the AF. We were stationed all over the U.S. and in Germany, but we were not allowed into Berlin or any WWII concentration camps (Auchwitz, Buchenwald, you get my drift). My father worked for the "spy" side of the USAF. We couldn't go anywhere other than our home in Frankfurt and I also do remember when he was "captured" when the Greek military junta took place in 1967 and our State Department came to our housing unit and informed Mom that Dad was "captured."

Stress? As a young kid? I'm so tired of generational peers talking about being stressed because their parents divorced (not that that isn't emotional-laden). But, when your parent goes to three wars, gets captured, you're told by your peers he's a "baby killer" and then you get dragged to yet another duty station for another year or tw0 . . .my mother used to finally laugh that he was gone for half of their anniversaries and Chrismases.

Stressful environment? I wish my friends and I had had any kind of support group. It was just never talked about. But I don't stay long at any job or any relationship . . .somehow . . .I know I'll be shipped off to another station. I'm stuck at being 10 to 15 years old and everybody will be moving, I'm moving, no roots in school or town or city, don't know my cousins or aunts or uncles or grandparents.

But, I can promise you this: I can pack a household quickly, efficiently and with no breakage of your stuff. In like a day or two. However, I'm now so tired of "So, where are you from?" From? I'm not from anywhere.

I sure do understand childhood stress. And it will still bothers kids when they get older. My folks are dead, yet I still wait for the call to tell me that we're moving again. Act-out or be depressed. I've done both. I'm not sure that when people are in their 40s or 50s that there is much help for us. But I am glad for this article. So, it isn't me . . .

[Paula]

I grew up in a very violent family. My mother drank and my dad worked all the time away from home. Me and my two brothers basically raised ourselves, the oldest ran away at 14 and didn't come back, and the other who is 3 years older than me is an alcoholic with a host of personal problems. I remember my oldest brother stabbed my dad cause he was going to take my mom back to her mom's. I'm not depressed as much as I am a cronic worrier. I worry about everyone I know, especially my kids. My kids however have never witnessed violence, drunkeness or brutality, I made sure of that!!

[Southoc]

Duh!

[some girl]

I knew I was gay from a very young age. And the stress of seeing how gay people were treated, and what my future might be like because of the stigma, was an enormous stress growing up. In addition, I had a very anxious, narcissistic mother. I spent ten years in therapy from 20-30, but I still battle anxiety and depression. Even though I'm in a happy relationship and have a good life, I still feel emotionally depleted, tired, used up. I don't expect that will ever change.

[Justin]

A scientific answer to a common sense issue.

[wrt]

No! How could they've even though of that?! Early stress affecting later years?? How unlikely... How about focusing on treatments, since they're withholding substances that have shown to work already.

[CSUF Alum]

How about the stress of growing up with two idiotic parents who treat the firstborn, a girl, like crap, then when the son is born, he gets lorded over and do whatever he wants, when he wants with no consequences? I didn't have any real friends growing up, having to endure the first 14 years of my life living in a 1 bd apt in LA, while remembering that more than half of my childhood my dad was unemployed (today I think it was by choice).
When we finally moved and got a house, I was forced to do lawnwork (as an asthmatic it wasn't good, but the parents didn't care), house cleaning, while my brother and parents just watched and did the bare minimum to upkeep the house.
I hated school and was very lazy on purpose. I think it was due to the fact that I could use poor grades and a bad attitude to get attention. I knew I could do the work, but why?
Now, when visiting my parents, my kids are told they have to do chores because my parents are still too lazy to keep their place clean. My kids should be kids, and I agree that this is an issue and condition that can be handed down genetically.
My own children have acted out, my oldest sometimes violently and made threats against the family, to which no amount of therapy helped- it was always MY fault or the conditions he was being raised. Nice passing the buck from "professionals", huh?
Anyway, my other two are lacadaisical about school and even my GATE student is feeling stressed about having to be the best in her "Blue Ribbon School".
Kids should just be kids and loved unconditionally. I wish someone would've helped me when I was a kid and I wouldn't have the depression that I have now that I hide from my family because I don't want them to see me as a failure and my cruel parents think that they're somehow not responsible and lecture me like I'm the child and not the adult that I am when they're the ones who screwed me up to begin with.

[Paul Hunstad]

The novel antidepressant and selective serotonin reuptake enhancer (SSRE, yes, that's right..not an SSRI) tianeptine, marketed under the trade names Stablon, Coaxil and Tatinol in parts of Europe, Latin America and Asia, lowers cortisol levels, restoring neuroplasticity in the hippocampus.

The result is an antidepressant and anxiolytic effect. Long term stress has been proven to cause damage and atrophy to the hippocampus, causing anxiety and depression.

Google tianeptine to learn more.