Childhood Trauma Predicts Poor Mental Health in Adults
A study showed that increased exposure to childhood trauma was associated with poor mental health outcomes, increased stress, and higher risks for suicide among adults. Stress appraisals and perceived stress mediated this association.
METHODOLOGY:
In this prospective study, 273 adults (mean age, 38 years; 48.4% men; 85% White) completed online questionnaires in two sessions.
Researchers assessed the potential associations between childhood trauma (including emotional/physical/sexual abuse and emotional/physical neglect) and outcomes in adulthood related to mental health, suicide risk factors, and stress.
Session 1 included the collection of data on demographics, history of childhood trauma, perceived social support, subjective socioeconomic status, and suicide-related experiences.
After 1 week, session 2 included the collection of data on daily stress appraisals; severity of depression and anxiety; and perceived stress, defeat, and entrapment.
TAKEAWAY:
Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) scores were significantly correlated with stress appraisals, perceived stress, depression, anxiety, defeat, entrapment, social support, and subjective socioeconomic status (P < .01 for all).
CTQ scores significantly predicted stress appraisals, perceived stress, depression, anxiety, defeat, and entrapment (P < .001 for all).
Childhood trauma had significant indirect effects on mental health and suicide risk factors via stress appraisals (depression, anxiety, defeat, and entrapment; P < .001 for all) and perceived stress (depression, anxiety, defeat, and entrapment; P < .001 for all).
Social support, subjective socioeconomic status, and suicide-related history did not moderate the association between CTQ scores and mental health outcomes, stress-related outcomes, and suicide risk factors among adults.
IN PRACTICE:
"[The study] findings underscore the enduring impact of childhood trauma on mental health outcomes and suicide risk in adulthood, mediated through its influence on stress appraisals and perceptions of stress encountered in daily life," the authors wrote.
"These current findings may inform interventions designed to reduce the negative effects of childhood trauma," they added.
SOURCE:
This study was led by Leizhi Wang, School of Psychology, University of Leeds, Leeds, England. It was published online on June 23 in PLOS One.
LIMITATIONS:
This study did not include participants' current health conditions, potentially leading to confounding. Additional limitations included the lack of a longitudinal study design and lack of objective stress assessments such as the measurement of cortisol levels.
DISCLOSURES:
This study did not receive any specific funding, and the authors declared having no conflicts of interest.
This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
I wore a glucose tracker to monitor my holiday weight gain. Here's what happened
If you're anything like me, then the whole point of a week away on holiday is that you can eat and drink as much as you want, guilt-free. But how many of us can properly switch off? Too often, phantom calorie counts float next to the delicious treats listed on restaurant menus or presented in the windows of patisseries. Inevitably, there is panic, as the jeans worn on the flight to somewhere sunny refuse to button on the return home. Add to this a long string of hangovers and the general sluggishness that follows a week of heavy dinners, and you can find yourself more drained by a trip away than you were before it. Yet the positive effects that come with a week of R&R aren't to be underestimated. Holidays can be good for the health of our muscles, hearts, brains and blood sugar alike. So, earlier this year, I went off to Greece armed with a glucose tracker and the determination to keep a food diary but still enjoy myself, to see how much damage a week of ice cream, souvlaki and wine can really do to your health. The glucose tracker in my arm was there to tell me about how all of these carbs could 'spike' my blood sugar, leading to potential consequences for my health later down the line. Going to a Mediterranean country wasn't cheating. Yes, there's plenty of fresh vegetables and your food is more likely cooked in olive oil than butter, making it better for your heart and your skin. But there's also deep fried feta, chips inside of massive pita wraps, huge trays of baklava, and many different kinds of spirits to contend with. I went to Athens and then an island, with two friends and my boyfriend, who, thanks to spending a lot of time in the gym, usually eats about 4,000 calories a day. Foodwise I pretty much kept up with him for the whole trip away. For breakfast on our first day I had a huge bowl of creamy full-fat Greek yoghurt, topped with tahini, banana, honey and nuts. Lunch was a halloumi souvlaki, stuffed with chips and some kind of delicious yellow sauce. I split a box of baklava as a snack with one of my friends and then for dinner, I had a huge bowl of orzo with mushrooms, a side of (more) chips, and dessert, a platter of Greek treats split between the four of us. In true first-night-away style we got through five litres of wine. In our defence, it was 11 euros a jug. (Then I went back to our AirBnB and ate four croissants meant for the morning to soak it up). I might have earned some of that with a walk up the acropolis (thankfully, we hadn't planned it for the morning afterwards) but the rest of the holiday was spent lazing about. We all took it a bit easier on the booze but made up for it in food. Most mornings started with Greek yoghurt, but the nights ended with huge dinners, snacks afterwards, and a dessert like loukoumades (donuts covered in hard sugar) to finish. At home I try not to snack too much (a rule of keeping your blood sugar in check) but while I was away I ate anything I stumbled across that looked half-tasty. All in all, I totally pigged out and I drank more than I do in an average month. What would this blip in my usual moderate lifestyle mean for my health in the long run? Lauren's diet: at home vs abroad How bad is it really to gain a few pounds on holiday? I'm not here to tell you to starve on holiday. As personal trainer Dalton Wong helpfully puts it, 'losing holiday weight is easy, but you'll never get back the time that you spend away'. Yet the truth is that a sudden jump in weight can be jarring. When I got on the scale after my week in Greece, I weighed a full half a stone more than I had done when I left. I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. Did all the cheese and pita bread I ate really do that much damage? Probably not, Wong says. 'That jump won't just be fat but also water retention, caused by eating a lot of salty food, and probably a bit of fat depending on how much you've eaten,' he explains. If you're someone who does a lot of strength training, 'you might even put on a bit of lean muscle mass, because you're giving your muscles the good rest and nutrients that they need to actually grow'. As Wong often reassures his clients, you would have to eat a truly enormous amount of food to put on half a stone of fat in a week. A single pound of fat gained requires 'about 500 extra calories every day on top of the amount you need to maintain your weight,' he explains. As such, the reality is that a week of overindulgence likely won't make you gain more than two or three pounds at most, even if, like me, you've ended up reaching to the back of your wardrobe for an extra pair of trousers. I think I ate at least 4,000 calories a day. To maintain my weight I need about 2,000, roughly what I eat when I'm at home. It's not all as simple as calories in, calories out, either, however. 'Your body has a set point that it really wants to stay at,' says nutritionist Jenna Hope. Once you return from holiday, your body works hard to bring your weight back down to its usual levels, a process that can be masked by water weight and constipation. 'A week or two, or even three, outside of your norm might not actually cause weight gain at all, because you aren't causing any long-term changes to your metabolic activity,' so long as you go back to your normal habits. For this reason, Wong advises that you 'avoid weighing yourself for four weeks after you get home,' he says. 'Anything you see differently in the scales then might be actual fat, but until then, what you're seeing likely isn't real weight gain.' Sure enough, after a week back at home I was only three pounds heavier than I was when I landed in Athens; after a month, I was back to my usual weight. Given the power of your set point, shifting the weight can be as simple as 'going for an extra walk after lunch,' says Wong. If you really are concerned about putting on weight on holiday, 'either eat or drink your calories,' he advises. 'Have the extra cocktail or the slice of cake, not both. You'll likely be satisfied with one and feel a bit healthier afterwards.' What happens on the inside? The scales don't tell the full story, however. Studies that examine what a week of overindulgence does to your body only present bad news. One Oxford University study reveals that three weeks of eating badly is enough to raise your risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Their participants were fed a diet high in sat-fats (crisps, cheese, chocolate and pizza) for 24 days, and while their weight didn't budge, their cholesterol levels spiked by 10 per cent, and the fat in their liver increased by a fifth. A summer trip can also give you an 'obese brain', another recent paper from the University of Tubingen in Germany found (clearly, holiday-spoiling is a flourishing academic niche). Just five days of eating a poor diet is enough to cause changes to our brains that outlive 'the timeframe of the consumption', reports Professor Stephanie Kullmann. After eating an extra 1,000 calories a day for five days, 'the brain and behaviour response resemble that of a person with obesity and changes in the brain seem to occur prior to weight gain.' What can also change quickly is our gut microbiome. 'A week or two weeks of eating differently and not getting enough fibre is long enough to see some changes in the makeup of your gut,' says Hope. The happiness of your gut is a core to good energy levels, proper digestion, immune function and even keeping you in a good mood. Spending time away in a totally different food environment is part of why we can come back from holiday feeling more sluggish and constipated than ever before. From the food log before and after my holiday, and while I was away, it's clear that I was eating more than I usually would for a few weeks on either side. I'd have an extra pint of beer or glass of wine on a Wednesday and I'd often veer towards something heavy in fat and salt and therefore attractive to my 'obese brain' for dinner post-holiday. I'm sure that my gut was not impressed. 'If you go away multiple times a year, it can be really hard to reset and not slide into bad habits,' Hope says. Fortunately, this is easily avoided. 'Preparing your breakfasts and lunches for the week that you're back home can be really helpful, as it removes the element of spontaneous choice and helps you make better decisions,' says Hope. 'It can be really helpful to order a grocery shop to arrive on the day that you're back.' To make it even easier for yourself, 'try having a healthy breakfast on the days that you're away, rather than diving into the hotel buffet and having everything you can see,' she adds. Having one healthy meal a day makes it much easier to get back to normal once you're home, and if it's high in protein, you won't instantly reach for a snack as soon as you leave your hotel. (And if you're in the land of thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, like I was, it won't feel like a sacrifice.) Will a holiday raise your blood sugar? Blood sugar monitors are increasingly being worn by people who aren't diabetic. The way they work is that you stick them into your arm (there's a small needle, but you can't feel it once it's in), and then you can monitor the amount of sugar that's in your blood after you've eaten from an app on your phone. Ups and downs are normal, but dramatic spikes after meals or prolonged periods of super-high blood sugar can indicate insulin resistance. This is a sign that your body is struggling to handle the amount of sugar you're feeding it, and is a precursor for type 2 diabetes. Discovering the foods that 'spike' you can help you prevent this in the long term, and this can also help you to avoid the sluggishness and fatigue caused by the crashes that follow. It was interesting to see that a typical day in Greece eating a lot of carby and sugary foods made my blood sugar soar. But I can't say it made me behave any differently. I did get a few weird looks from other tourists and it does ruin the bikini photos. The really useful bit came when I looked at my results after landing in Britain. I wore my patch, from Lingo by Abbott before, during, and after my holiday. In the week that I came home, my average blood sugar fell to being 95 per cent lower than it had been while I was away. At first I was shocked. Clearly my body had gone into panic mode because of how much I'd eaten. The stats sound dramatic on paper but in both cases, my average blood sugar remained in a 'healthy' range overall, only briefly rising or falling to unhealthy levels. Such a return to normal is a good sign: 'this shows that you're in good metabolic health and that your body is responding with insulin in a normal way,' says Sophie Bertrand, Abbott's nutritionist. Your blood sugar levels are a result of homeostasis, the complex bodily process that keeps us functioning as normal. It's hard to disrupt this process in a serious way by overeating for a week, Bertrand says. If you're in your twenties and have a BMI that marks you as healthy, like me, then you can eat whatever you like for a short while and be fine in this regard, but this process works less well as you age. Seeing its effects was helpful. 'Someone who's older might find that they have more problems bringing their blood sugar down to normal,' says Bertrand. Over time, this is an issue that can raise your chances of developing insulin resistance, a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes. About 40 per cent of us in Britain are insulin resistant. With this in mind I'll probably start approaching holidays a bit differently as I age. But regardless of your health, there are ways to get back to normal more quickly regardless of your age. Again, a protein-rich breakfast is king: 'this will help to avoid big fluctuations in your blood sugar throughout the day,' says Bertrand. 'Your sleep is also really important in keeping your blood sugar levels stable. Take the opportunity to grab a few more hours each night than you might at home.' Regardless of what you're eating or how much you're sleeping, a quick walk after dinner can work well 'to balance out your blood sugar' too. Besides, the chance to let loose can be good for us. Regularly going on holiday can lower your chances of dying from heart disease in the long run, and can also bring improvements to your blood sugar and 'good' cholesterol levels. As Bertrand puts it, 'a week of treats is much better than a routine filled with less healthy food or binges that follow restricting yourself too severely'. Do you need to worry about your step count? All of this ignores a fact that's fundamental to the concept of holidays: a week or more of relaxation does us provable good. Stress – both the physical and mental kind – can wreak havoc on our health. If you're the kind of person who exercises a lot, a week spent abstaining from lifting heavy weights or sprinting on the treadmill, presents a much-needed break for your joints and muscles. As a result, 'some of the weight you put on while you're on holiday might well be lean muscle mass,' says Wong. That said, keeping your step count up can actually offset the potential damage done to your health by eating outside of the norm. 'Going for a walk before or after dinner is a good way to help bring your blood sugar back down to a healthy range,' says Bertrand. And what's more, you'll probably find it easier to get them in while you're away than you do at home. I certainly did: my average steps per day are 12,000 as per my health tracker, but I got in 15,000 a day in Athens, and it didn't occur to me that I was exercising. Do I regret letting loose on holiday? Not at all. As Jenna Hope says, the really crucial thing for your health is how quickly you go back to normal after your holidays, and making sure that you don't live with your 'holiday brain' between them. Next time I go away, I'll be sure to plan some healthy meals for the week that I get back, and I'll try to find ways to keep my step count up while I'm away too, to counter the effects of eating badly. I'm not sure that I'd take a glucose tracker with me again, but it's certainly helpful to know that beer spikes me more than wine, and that baklava does less damage than chips. Best of all is that, having looked at the changes to my body, I now know that with some thought, I can keep enjoying holidays the way I want for the rest of my life. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
CNET
3 hours ago
- CNET
Mapping the Margins: The Internet's Invisible Hand in Reproductive Care
We don't often think about the internet as being good for our health. In fact, 'internet' and 'health' are primarily related in a negative context in online spaces -- we're getting too much screen time, we're 'chronically' online, etc. It may come as a surprise, but access to the internet is commonly recognized as a "super" determinant of health. Limited internet access has been linked to high mortality rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, and having the internet in easy reach means we can stay informed about our health, order our prescriptions with a tap, consult with doctors and get access to pregnancy and reproductive care. Sara Javaid and Lexi Rummel are among several researchers highlighting this connection. Following the repeal of Roe v. Wade, access to abortion and reproductive care has become critical nationwide, especially in places without adequate access to the internet. According to the findings in Rummel and Javaid's report, published by the National Women's Law Center, nearly half of all counties in the US are abortion deserts, or counties where the travel distance to the closest abortion care facility is over 100 miles; 53% of abortion deserts are also pregnancy care deserts. Notably, over 740,000 women live in counties with both a broadband desert and an abortion care desert, and nearly one-third of those women are women of color. National Women's Law Center 'I think broadband has the potential to be the final way in which people can access abortion care,' Javaid, senior research analyst at the National Women's Law Center and lead researcher for the report, told CNET. Locating local internet providers Reproductive care is essential for services like cancer screening, gender-affirming care and the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Black women and other women of color are overrepresented in abortion care deserts, which amplifies their vulnerability to negative health outcomes. According to a 2022 report by the Human Rights Watch, Black women are more than one and a half times as likely to die from cervical cancer as white women, a cancer which the Human Rights Watch notes is preventable with routine screenings and follow-up care. Javaid and Rummel's report explores the intersection of abortion care, pregnancy care, broadband and food deserts in America. "Women do not live single-issue lives, and this report really emphasizes that when looking at the data," said Rummel, counsel for health equity and justice at the National Women's Law Center. "There are significant, intersecting barriers that women are facing in accessing critical reproductive health care and resources across the United States." The internet plays a vital role in bridging the gap for abortion care, pregnancy care and even food deserts. The report defines an abortion desert as a county where an abortion clinic is more than 100 miles away -- but Javaid admits that doesn't fully capture the challenge. "100 miles is still a long way to go," Javaid said. "And if you don't have access to public transportation, you don't have access to a reliable car, then 25 miles could be an abortion desert for you." Additionally, the effects of one desert compound when multiple deserts overlap. In the case of broadband deserts, not being able to get preventative care via telehealth visits means being deprived of catching health issues or dangerous pregnancy conditions early. The internet effectively bridges the gap in reproductive care deserts, allowing women to consult with doctors or find an abortion care or pregnancy care facility. The report states that one in 10 US counties are broadband deserts, where more than half of residents do not have access to at least 100Mbps down/20Mbps up (a definition set by the Federal Communications Commission). National Women's Law Center While broadband deserts are technically among the report's less prevalent deserts, the definition relies on outdated FCC data from 2022. "I will say that the report is narrower in scope than we wanted because of a lack of data that exists," Javaid told me. "We know that it is likely an undercount because of the way they collect data. There's really not great broadband data collection out there." "I would guess there's probably four times more broadband deserts than they [Rummell and Javaid] recognize,' Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told CNET. While broadband may seem easily accessible for some, the truth is that for many, it's still unaffordable. Although broadband is available to 94% of US households, according to current FCC numbers, that data doesn't account for the number of homes enrolled in an internet service. "I would encourage thinking about broadband deserts from the supply side and the demand side," John Horrigan, a senior fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, told CNET. "The other side of the coin is the number of households that are adopting broadband in a particular area." While broadband availability has drastically improved in recent years, adoption rates are still low in low-income communities and communities of color. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that only 57% of adults making less than $30,000 a year have an internet subscription, compared to 95% of adults making at least $100,000. US Census data from 2021 noted that low-income households, seniors and communities of color were more likely to be "smartphone-only" households. Recent data from Ookla reported that the broadband divide worsened in 32 states in 2024, potentially due in part to the ending of the Affordable Connectivity Program, which offered a significant discount of $30 on monthly internet bills for low-income families. (Disclaimer: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the same company that owns CNET.) "There are a lot of broadband deserts where there are connections available, but people are not able to use them," Mitchell said. "High price, lack of a device, past debt, are all common things." "The lowest 20% of households in the United States, in terms of income distribution, is really where you begin to see substantial fall-offs in home internet adoption rates," echoed Horrigan. Recent policies, like President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, pose challenges for those affected by broadband, food and reproductive deserts due to cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. Care workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) participated in a living cemetery protest at the US Capitol on June 23, 2025, in Washington, the passing of Dobbs v. Jackson, access to safe reproductive care is more threatened than ever: Infant mortality rates increased after the passing of Dobbs, specifically in states that instituted complete or 6-week abortion bans. "We still don't know the true impact of the Dobbs decision," Javaid told me. "I don't know that we will know for several years, and that's where it's so important to rely on the community and the experience of people to inform our understanding of what's going on." Some possible solutions to making broadband more affordable and ensuring access to telehealth include state low-income requirements, like New York's $15 low-income plan required for ISPs serving 20,000 households or more. While the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment program hasn't resulted in buildouts yet, Horrigan notes that BEAD permits funding for nondeployment purposes, which could potentially improve connectivity by investing in anchor institutions like libraries or hospitals. Nondeployment funding is "under review," per the latest notice from the federal agency that oversees BEAD, the National Telecommunications Information Administration. While the NTIA and BEAD are being restructured, community-based solutions are more critical than ever for ensuring overlooked communities can get back online. To get involved, you can easily contact your state's broadband office and learn what statewide or community-focused initiatives are being implemented near you. Your local representatives need to know that the broadband divide is a topic of concern for you -- that's why it's always important to reach out and call. You can find contact information for your local representatives here.
New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
Gaza Health Ministry Says Israeli Military Killed 32 in Attack Near Aid Site
The Gazan health authorities said that Israel's military killed at least 32 people in southern Gaza on Saturday, while Palestinian news media reported that Israeli troops had opened fire near a food distribution site. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports, as did the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israel-backed group that operates the food distribution site. The main hospital in southern Gaza, the Nasser Medical Complex, said in a statement that it had received 29 bodies 'from the aid points,' without explaining who had killed them, how they had died or where the other bodies had been taken. It appeared to be the latest episode of violence connected to a new and deeply contentious food distribution system in Gaza that was introduced by Israel nearly two months ago. The United Nations said this week that more than 670 Palestinians had been killed near sites built under the system. Since the system was implemented in late May, the Israeli military has mandated the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group partly developed by Israeli officials and businessmen, to distribute food to Palestinians from a handful of sites in areas under Israeli control. The system largely replaces one run by the United Nations, which previously distributed food from hundreds of points, mainly in areas controlled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel says the new system is necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing, stockpiling and selling the food at high prices to civilians. Aid groups say it has turned the process of seeking food into a near-daily death trap because it brings crowds of desperate and hungry civilians into regular proximity with Israeli troops. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly shot in recent months at crowds of Palestinians walking toward the foundation's food distribution points, seemingly as a crude and lethal form of crowd control. Israeli officials have acknowledged that troops have fired on crowds approaching the aid sites but have also suggested that the death tolls have been inflated. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said that violence rarely occurs at the sites themselves and has accused Hamas of both encouraging the unrest and of attacking Palestinians employed at the sites. More generally, aid groups say that the new system has yet to prevent widespread hunger, which surged in Gaza following Israel's 80-day blockade on all food and fuel between March and May. This week, one of the main United Nations agencies in Gaza, UNRWA, said that it screened more than 10,600 children in the second half of June and found that more than 900, or nearly one in 10, was suffering from malnourishment. Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.
