Physical Health of Adults Who Experienced Childhood Trauma

Nowadays, people has just began to be careful about their psychological and mental health. However, it is important to consider that physical health is related with what we experience now and in the past. The topic that i explain in this paper mostly about physical health of adults who experienced trauma when they are children. This is highly significant to me because we all experience some problematic situations in our life and not all of them turn into  a trauma. However, when it became one, people has to live with what trauma brings along  such as psychological and physical symptoms at that time or in future. 

 Trauma is everywhere in our lives and everyone experience the event in their own way. It is  not affect only one part of the time, consequences of it might continue through all our lives.  The point that i’m going to explain in this paper is mostly about this lifelong process. Great  number of studies demonstrate that childhood traumatic events have some negative effects on  physical issues in adulthood. 

 A traumatic event is any event which overwhelms our core capacity to cope. It results in an  experience of personal threat to our safety and integrity of our identity. According to DSM-IV  criteria, the definition of PTSD involves statements such as ‘the person’s response involved  intense fear, helplessness or horror (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The  developmental phase of trauma incidence is the exposure to trauma that could be associated  with potential psychopathological risk (Barnett et al., 1993, English et al., 2005). The  traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in recurrent, intrusive images, thoughts or  dreams. The trauma itself is not an event but a response to an experience in which the  individual’s response has been compromised.

 A crucial determinant and predictor of wellbeing over the lifespan is adverse childhood  experiences (Hege et al., 2020). Cumulative retrospective self-reports of child adversity prior  to the age of18, including maltreatment and family dysfunction, is included in adverse  childhood experiences (Racine et al., 2021). We all know that the childhood trauma is  associated with psychological problems and mental health. However, what we consider less is  physical health issues might come up with years after the trauma. Child traumatic stress refers  to the physical and emotional responses of a child to events that threaten the life or physical  integrity of child or of someone critically important to the child. 

 It is well recognized that, through positive experiences that improve the development of  biological systems, conditions from the beginning of life as well as conditions during  childhood form the basis for lifelong health and well-being. Early life stress is also  increasingly shown to disturb the growth of brain architecture, other maturing organs, and  metabolic functions that have detrimental health, morbidity, and mortality implications later  in life in the absence of protective factors and resilience. Examples of factors and  circumstances of significance for toxic early life stress that significantly affect children are  adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which form the basis for intergenerational  transmission of trauma, as well as life and health as adults (Andersson et al., 2020). 

 When we talk about childhood traumatic events, it does not have to include only injury or  violence, it includes inappropriate sexual experiences which affects developmental process of  children. ACEs are more likely to be identified among individuals living in neighbourhoods  and communities. This can contribute to ACEs playing a major role in children experiencing  increased adverse health effects from an intergenerational context by social determinants of  health. Research has shown that ACEs can also lead to one's parenting behaviors and  activities, which in turn have a major influence on children's health and well-being in the  household (Hege et al., 2020). 

 As people, we have a lifelong developmental process which requires to understand where  psychopathology is derived from. Understanding and interpreting the problems and results  related with it is important fort his developmental process. Any child who experience trauma  wants to be understood and share some feelings such as he or she is not alone. However,  depending on many things in that moment like family, social opportunities or Professional  help, the child might not going well in that process. Years that the most important of a  person’s life affected negatively and the effects of it might continue through a lifetime.  Physical and psychological reasons, problems and outcomes may lead us about what did that  person experience and how can he/she cope with this. Developmental psychopathology can  help us about that point to examine the risk factors and outcomes seperately and then finding  some connections between them. 

 When we try to interpret the situation about a child, we cannot look at it from only one  specific perspective; we have to see things differently. Any adult may experience some health  issues in different areas however, what we should do is look inside of the person deeper.  Everyone lives many things in life but how they experience and cope with it is different.  Everything changes and develops; so the humans. Many factors that related with each other  constitute a situation and while the situation affects the person, the person affects it too. Even  a small change in factors might affect the result of situation and we have to determine where  the situation is pathological or not. Considering all of the above, adverse child experience  include many factors, links and dynamics inside of it. When the situation like this came up, as  a psychologist, we try to see things seperately first, and then finding the connection between  situation itself and how the person experience it.

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