Can preventing childhood maltreatment reduce depression?

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Researchers pulled together evidence from more than half a million people to test a simple but important idea: if childhood maltreatment raises the risk of adult depression, could reducing maltreatment help prevent it? The answer, as always, is more complicated than it first appears.

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suPAR step forward? Teenage trauma linked to chronic inflammation in new study

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Not all childhood trauma has the same biological impact. A new study finds that adversity in late childhood is most strongly linked to immune dysregulation at age 24.

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Under the skin: How childhood maltreatment may trigger lifelong multimorbidity

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Why do people who were maltreated as children face higher risks of both mental and physical illness? A new Mendelian randomisation study suggests that metabolic markers — like triglycerides and blood sugar — may be part of the chain connecting adversity to later multimorbidity.

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The scars that shape the mind: childhood adversity and the risk of psychosis

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Emotional abuse in childhood was linked to a more than 3.5x greater chance of developing psychosis later in life. This comprehensive new meta-analysis explores the role of early trauma, sex differences, and symptom onset timing in psychosis risk.

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Youth trauma narratives: a thematic analysis of meaning-making during trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT)

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In her debut blog, Georgina Thompson explores a qualitative study of how young people create meaning of their experiences during trauma narration, when receiving trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy.

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Transgenerational trauma: maternal childhood maltreatment and perinatal outcomes

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Lucy Purnell explores a recent systematic review, which finds that maternal childhood maltreatment is associated with adverse perinatal mental health experiences, and this association is mediated by disruptions to maternal emotional functioning.

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Victimisation and loneliness: who is more likely to become lonely?

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A group of UCL Mental Health MSc students summarise a recent longitudinal twin study of the association between victimisation and loneliness from childhood to young adulthood.

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Can childhood maltreatment lead to a female cycle of violence?

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Ioana Crivatu explores a meta-analysis which finds that females exposed to adverse events in childhood may be more likely to enter a cycle of violence in adulthood

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Masculinity, depression and suicide risk in men with a history of childhood maltreatment

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In her debut blog, Cara Richardson explores whether masculine values are differentially linked to men’s mental health functioning, depending on exposure to childhood maltreatment.

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Suicide risk following childhood interpersonal violence

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Katrina Witt considers the findings of a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, which looks at exposure to interpersonal violence in childhood, and the impact that it may have on risk of suicide in young people.

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