A new Yale study reveals that the timing of childhood adversity can influence how susceptible people are to anxiety and other psychiatric problems as adults. Research has shown that young people who face adversity, such as traumatic or stressful events during brain development, are 40% more likely to develop anxiety disorders by adulthood. However, most who endure such experiences during childhood and adolescence prove to be resilient to these mental health effects.
According to the study published on March 5 in the journal Communications Psychology, experiencing low-to-moderate levels of adversity during middle childhood (ages 6 to 12) and adolescence may foster resilience to anxiety later in life. For the study, researchers assessed patterns of adversity exposure in 120 adults across four stages of development: early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Using neuroimaging technology, they examined participants' corticolimbic circuitry, measuring neural activation as participants viewed cues signaling either threat or safety. This examination offered insights into how the process of discriminating between danger and safety is related to exposure to adversity.
The team analyzed the data using a person-centered model, which identified cohesive groups among the participants. The model identified three profiles: those with lower lifetime adversity who showed higher neural activation to threat and lower activation to safety; those who experienced low-to-moderate adversity during middle childhood and adolescence with lower neural activation to threat and higher activation to safety; and those with higher lifetime adversity exposure who exhibited minimal neural activation to both threat and safety.
Individuals in the second profile, who experienced low-to-moderate adversity during middle childhood and adolescence, had lower anxiety than those in the other two profiles. "Greater levels of childhood adversity are associated with higher risk of mental health problems in adulthood, but our findings suggest the story is more nuanced than that," said Lucinda Sisk, a Ph.D. candidate in Yale's Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.
"Our findings suggest that a distinct pattern of discrimination between threat and safety cues—specifically, greater activation of the prefrontal cortex in response to safety—is linked with lower levels of anxiety, helping us better understand the heterogeneity we see in mental health among people who experienced adversity growing up," Sisk added.
The researchers found that individuals who developed resilience to mental health challenges exhibited distinct patterns of brain activation when asked to differentiate between danger and safety. The process of differentiating between danger and safety is known to be disrupted in people with anxiety disorders.
"This is one of the first studies to show both that the timing of adversity exposure really matters and what underlying neural processes might contribute to risk or resilience to anxiety following adversity," said Dylan Gee, an associate professor of psychology at Yale and co-senior author of the study. "If the same stressor occurs at age 5 versus age 15, it is affecting a brain that is at a very different point in its development," he noted.
"This study provides insight into the sensitive periods when the brain is especially plastic, and children's experiences are likely to have the most impact on their mental health later in life," Gee explained. "It also indicates that the brain's ability to effectively distinguish between what is safe and what is dangerous helps to protect against the development of anxiety disorders following childhood adversity."
Arielle Baskin-Sommers, an associate professor of psychology at Yale, is co-senior author of the study. Other study co-authors include Taylor J. Keding, Sonia Ruiz, Paola Odriozola, Sahana Kribakaran, Emily M. Cohodes, Sarah McCauley, Jason T. Haberman, and Camila Caballero, all of Yale; Sadie J. Zacharek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Hopewell R. Hodges of the University of Minnesota; and Jasmyne C. Pierre of the City College of New York.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.