Abused Girls Have More Severe Reactions to Stress As Adults
United Press International

August 01, 2000

CHICAGO, Aug.1 (UPI) -- Abuse in a girl's childhood may surface in adulthood in the form of reactions to stress that are far more severe than would be the case if she had not been molested.
In a new study, women who were abused as children had reactions to stress that were six times more violent than women who were not abused.
This hair-trigger response to stressful circumstances took the form of a surge in levels of ACTH, a hormone linked to anxiety and depression, the researchers reported.
Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and the leader of the study, wrote, "This is the first human study to repeat persistent changes in stress reactivity in adult survivors of early trauma."
Robert R. Butterworth, a child psychologist with International Trauma Associates in Los Angeles, California, told UPI, "The sense I get from this study is that most people who were not abused and who generally grew up in a normal environment are, in a way, inoculated."
"It's almost like the carburetor of a car. Those individuals that went through trauma have been set up higher and as a result, have more chemical transmissions going through, bringing that person into a higher aroused state," adds Butterworth.
The study focused on 49 women between the ages of 18 and 45, who were divided into four groups and given a 20-minute stress test.
The first group was made up of women reporting no history of child abuse or psychiatric disorders.
The second group was comprised of women diagnosed with major depression, but with no record of being abused as children.
The third were women who were abused in the past, either physically or sexually, but not currently suffering from clinical depression.
Women in the fourth group were both the victims of abuse and the sufferers of depression.
"We additionally made an effort to obtain independent validation of the abuse from court, social service, or medicinal records and from family and friends, although not all subjects included in the study were able to provide such validation, " wrote Nemeroff.
Researchers gave each woman a stress test, collecting blood samples before, during and after the examination, which consisted of a 10 minute "anticipation and preparation" phase and a 10 minute public speaking and mental arithmetic task in front of an audience.
After analyzing the blood, Nemeroff's team found that while the first two groups showed a slight rise in ACTH when under duress, members of the last two registered a massive leap in the hormone's presence at the first sign of stress.
Dr. Sandra Kaplan, vice chairwoman, department of psychiatry, North Shore University Hospital, New York University School of Medicine, Manhasset, N.Y., told UPI, "I think it's an elegant study and very important."
Kaplan added, "What we need now are studies of children who have been abused as they grow up, to clarify exactly what damage occurs. Also very important is how to ameliorate it. In other words, if damage has occurred, how do you protect children and rehabilitate them?"
According to Nemeroff, "Future studies in survivors of childhood abuse should separate the effects of different kinds of abuse at different developmental stages and should explore potential reversibility of this biological stress."
This study, which appears in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

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