It is possible to live a life and succeed despite childhood abuse and trauma but I 100% disagree that kids are resilient. It actually bothers me when people say that because it negates the power of abuse. It's a common misconception IMO.
Books like A Boy Called It and about the Lost Boys are marketed as survivor stories. They wouldn't make money if they chronicled the panic attacks, nightmares, alcohol abuse, debilitating depression, sexual malfunctioning, etc., that those survivors undoubtedly experience. So of course that kind of stuff is omitted.
Kids are very impacted by trauma and it affects them negatively for life. Almost all mental illnesses we know of are connected in some manner to childhood trauma/family dysfunction. Including ones that have a genetic component.
Children are fragile, IMO. Alcholism, drug dependency, anxiety disorder, depression, personality disorders, and on and on...all have roots in childhood experiences, even if there's a genetic propensity. Organic brain diseases like schizophrenia are even worse when the person with the condition experienced trauma. Childhood abuse affects functioning for life:
A high prevalence of childhood abuse has been reported in patients with severe mental illness. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 102 patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or schizoaffective disorder. Social, demographic, and clinical data were obtained. Patients were evaluated using Brief Psychotic Relative Scale, and Traumatic Life Events and Distressing Event questionnaires. Almost half (47.5%) of these patients had suffered some kind of child abuse, and our results confirmed a relationship between a history of childhood abuse and more severe psychosis. Diagnosis of schizophrenia was determined 4.1 years earlier in victims of childhood abuse. Hospital admissions were twice as high in victims of psychological abuse. Patients with a history of sexual abuse were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide (68% vs. 28.9%).
Prevalence and Clinical Impact of Childhood Trauma in... : The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
This research assessed the lifetime prevalence of traumatic events and current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 275 patients with severe mental illness (eg, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) receiving public mental health services in Concord and Manchester, New Hampshire and Baltimore, Maryland. Lifetime exposure to traumatic events was high, with 98% of the sample reporting exposure to at least 1 traumatic event.
PTSD was predicted most strongly by the number of different types of trauma, followed by childhood sexual abuse. The findings suggest that PTSD is a common comorbid disorder in severe mental illness that is frequently overlooked in mental health settings.
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...al_illness/links/58272e0908ae5c0137edd2cf.pdf
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Strong evidence exists for an association between childhood trauma, particularly childhood sexual abuse, and hallucinations in schizophrenia. Hallucinations are also well-documented symptoms in people with bipolar affective disorder.
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...estigation/links/00b49529871e1c73d3000000.pdf
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Sixty-five percent of the women reported histories of some type of abuse or neglect during childhood. Forty-five percent of the sample had been sexually abused, 51 percent had been physically abused, and 22 percent had experienced neglect. Seventy-four percent of the sexually abused women, 70 percent of the physically abused women, and 94 percent of the women who experienced neglect reported at least one additional form of abuse or neglect. Respondents who had been abused in childhood had higher levels of depressive and psychotic symptoms and higher rates of sexual victimization in adulthood than those who bad not been abused. Women who experienced neglect as children bad higher rates of homelessness in adulthood.
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The link between childhood trauma and mental illness: Effective interventions for mental health professionals
Barbara Everett, Ruth Gallop
Sage Publications, 2000
This informative book gives mental health professionals who are not child abuse specialists knowledge and skills that are especially relevant to their direct service role and practice context. It introduces to these practitioners a conceptual bridge between biomedical and psychosocial understandings of mental disorder, providing a multidimensional approach that allows professionals to think holistically and connect clients' abusive pasts with their present-day symptoms and behaviors. It includes reviews of the most up-to-date findings with direct practice guides in helping clients.
View at books.google.com
Psychological trauma
Bessel A Van der Kolk
American Psychiatric Pub, 2003
How many of your psychiatric patients have a history of severe physical or psychological abuse or other psychological trauma? These patients often present diagnostic dilemmas, get a variety of diagnoses, and frequently prove difficult-to-treat. They may have syndromes that are reminiscent of the post-traumatic sequelae in adults, such as physiological hyperactivity, a sense of loss of control, passivity alternating with uncontrolled violence, and sleep disturbances including nightmares. Investigating the impact of the traumatic event in connection with the development of the disorder is essential to an effective treatment approach. Psychological Trauma provides a basis for understanding human response to trauma. The consequences of specific traumas have usually been described as separate entities. This is the first book to examine human response to trauma as a whole. In this thorough study of the biologic, psychodynamic and social consequences of trauma, separate chapters explore:* The impact of separation from the parental figure on a child's development, including cognitive and neurological disturbances* The psychobiology of traumatic response* Traumatic antecedents of borderline personality disorder* The effect of trauma on the family unit* Amnesia and dissociation as response to trauma.
http://www.traumacenter.org/training/2017_Trauma_Conference(3).pdf
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I can go on and on with links. It is well settled scientifically that childhood trauma and abuse are connected to mental illness and adult malfunctioning.