Childhood trauma: Unfolding the lifelong impact on mental health by Erika Kuzminskaite ISBN 9789464732146, 9464732148 instant download

Childhood trauma: Unfolding the lifelong impact on mental health by Erika Kuzminskaite ISBN 9789464732146, 9464732148 instant download

This thesis aimed to understand how childhood trauma (CT), conceptualized as emotional/physical/sexual abuse or emotional/physical neglect before the age of 18 years, shapes mental health, what the potential underlying mechanisms of CT are, and what can be done about it in the context of adult depressive and/or anxiety disorders. The exploration of cross-sectional, longitudinal, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA), as well as a meta-analytic combination of results from multiple (inter)national clinical trials on depression treatment was used to examine the impact of CT on psychopathology, explore potential CT mechanisms that may heighten vulnerability for psychopathology, and investigate the impact of CT in the clinical setting. Our findings indicated that CT is associated with increased severity of various symptoms, including total depressive, anxiety, worry, and fear/phobic, suggesting a broad and nonspecific impact on psychopathology. Moreover, symptom severity persisted over the years, indicating increased chronicity. Our results also revealed that individuals with CT show alterations in the brain, mind, and body, including maladaptive personality characteristics and cognitions, accelerated biological aging, somatic health decline, brain structural and functional changes, greater alterations in daily affect intensity, dysregulated biological stress systems (particularly innate immune system capacity), and engagement in unhealthier lifestyle behaviors. The adverse effects were most pronounced in severe CT cases, characterized by multiple types or higher frequencies of trauma, with minimal differences between CT types. In the clinical setting, depressed adults with CT experienced significant symptom improvement following first-line pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments, but were more severely depressed before and after treatment.