Early Life Adversity and Childhood Maltreatment

A new study indicates that both family struggles and outside stressors shape adolescent behavior and wellbeing. The results suggest a two-way relationship, where early emotional or behavioral problems can also increase exposure to later adversity.

How you judge stress may depend on your past. A new study shows that recent depression makes stressors seem worse, but a difficult childhood may build resilience, making them seem less severe.

New research published in Psychological Reports has identified a key connection between childhood experiences and adult perseverance. The study found that a person's ability to manage emotions entirely accounts for the association between their upbringing and their grit.

Research in Biological Psychiatry indicates that people who experienced childhood trauma carry unique metabolic patterns into adulthood. These blood-based chemical changes may help explain why early-life adversity increases vulnerability to both physical and mental illnesses later in life.

Children who feel unsafe at home, in school, or in their neighborhood show differences in brain connectivity. A new neuroimaging study published in Psychological Medicine suggests these differences could help explain later mental health symptoms during adolescence.

A massive new study of nearly 73,000 first-year university students across 18 countries has uncovered alarming rates of suicidal ideation. The research also identified childhood adversity and specific mental health disorders as the primary drivers of this heightened risk.

A new longitudinal study of Chinese high school students suggests that growing up in poverty weakens belief in a just world, while unpredictable environments show less consistent effects. Perceptions of discrimination appear to help explain this link.

Women who endured childhood trauma may be more prone to eating disorders if they struggle with mentalizing, new research indicates. The findings point to a potential mediating role for difficulties in understanding mental states in this relationship.

Researchers report that sexual narcissism may serve as a psychological link between childhood trauma and compulsive sexual behavior. Participants with compulsive sexual behavior reported more trauma, greater sexual narcissism, and higher hypersexuality scores than controls.

A 10-year study of over 1,000 youth found that early exposure to abuse and neighborhood violence was associated with carrying firearms and threatening others with them during early adulthood, raising concerns about long-term effects of childhood trauma.

A longitudinal study in China suggests that teens who were maltreated as children often use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, which may help explain their heightened risk for depression and anxiety symptoms later in adolescence.

A new study suggests exercise can reduce the psychological toll of childhood adversity, but its benefits are not universal. Researchers found that a person’s genetic makeup, specifically a variant in the BDNF gene, can influence how effectively physical activity buffers...

Positive relationships in childhood may play a lasting role in protecting college students from suicidal ideation tied to trauma, a new study finds, offering promising implications for both clinical care and campus mental health programs.

Individuals with greater childhood trauma experienced and expressed fewer positive emotions—and more negative ones—during sexual disagreements. The link was largely explained by attachment anxiety, a fear-based relationship pattern formed early in life

Mothers who were maltreated as children are more likely to develop anxious romantic attachment styles, which in turn are linked to lower parenting satisfaction and efficacy, according to a study.