People who have suffered repeated abuse as children can also suffer the same kind of
People who have suffered repeated abuse as children can also suffer the same kind of brain change because of their traumatic experiences.This damage to the brain in turn makes it harder to cope with new stresses and difficulties that life throws up. This creates more stress and may shrink further the trembling web of brain connections in the memory and other cognitive systems. For young children brought up in harsh, stressful environments, these corrosive effects of stress on the brain can sap their ability to learn and prevent their intelligence developing fully.In Washington DC, for instance, 9 per cent of six and seven-year olds in one deprived neighbourhood had witnessed someone being shot. A further 13 per cent had seen someone being stabbed, while a staggering 16 per cent had seen a dead body on the street.
And witnessing muggings was commonplace - a quarter of these little children had seen one taking place. Stress of this type is likely to have profound effects on the minds of these children, as well as physical effects on the brains of at least some of them.One of the best antidotes to the corrosive effects of too much stress is love and affection. When young mice are regularly stroked gently on the back with a soft, dry paintbrush, beneficial changes in their brain chemistry result, of a type likely to promote positive cognitive and emotional development in important brain centres. It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that children deprived of cuddles and a close emotional relationship to one or more adults, show brains and bodies that are stunted. A few years ago our TV screens showed harrowing images of Romanian orphanages, a legacy of the Ceauc- escu regime.
The pictures of row upon row of dull- eyed orphans sitting in bare, dirty rooms still haunts many people. In the better Romanian orphanages, the children are reasonably well fed, clean and are allowed access to the fresh air. What they too often lack, however, is much more important, namely the brain-nurturing interchange with a loving adult who learns to understand and respond to them.But it is not just in Romania that children can be deprived of such essential mind and brain sculpture. In the Eighties, a group of researchers studied children in London who had gone into institutional care before the age of two, and left again sometime over the next five years. Though the children were given very good physical care, as well as decent mental and verbal stimulation, what they didn't get was a close relationship with one or two adults.
Rather, they were looked after by an army of different staff - 50 on average over the course of their stay.It is, of course, impossible for 50 different people to form the close relationship that a young child needs. So, it is not surprising to find that, in one study, a third of women who had been in institutions as children were psychiatrically ill by the time they were adults. In contrast, only one in 20 women who hadn't been in institutions as children were psychiatrically ill.And these adult women who had experienced such poor emotional care as children tended to become poor mothers, lacking in warmth, harsh with their children and showing inconsistency and poor control over them. Thus, before our eyes we see not only faulty mind sculpture within a generation, but also between different generations.The news was not all bleak, however.
Some of these women who had had terrible early experiences actually became good parents themselves, and these tended to be the ones who had met a partner they could count on to help them, and in whom they could confide.In short, loving relationships can help break the transmission of faulty mind sculpture across generations, as well as help to protect against the corrosive effects of stress.`Mind Sculpture: your brain's untapped potential' by Ian Robertson will be published this week by Bantam Press, pounds 13.99. WHEN FRANK Dobson announced his decision on Viagra last week, it set me thinking about my feet. This is not some tale of sexual perversion but an observation on a historic decision for the NHS. As a student I had athlete's foot, and I amassed a cupboard-full of over-the-counter creams and lotions to treat it Nothing worked. I then developed a fungal infection of my toenails which left them thickened and discoloured. About a decade ago, I learnt there was a new oral treatment for thickened toenails called Lamisil, so I asked my GP if he would prescribe it.