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| Childhood abuse can increase suicide risk |
| Health |
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The trauma caused by having been abused as a child can leave permanent genetic scars linked to suicide, according to a new study reported by the Montreal Gazette.
Researchers at Montreal’s McGill University and the Douglas Institute came to that conclusion after examining the brain tissue of 12 male suicide victims who had suffered severe sexual or physical abuse or neglect as children. In every case, a gene that affects how people respond to stress had been altered in a way that made them more susceptible to overwhelming feelings of depression, anxiety and despair, and thus more at risk of taking their own lives. This “epigenetic” change did not show up in the brain tissue of 12 suicide victims who had not been traumatized as children, or in 12 people who died from other causes. “If you were abused, you will have changes in the way your brain works that are going to determine how you deal with stress,” Douglas Institute psychiatrist and neuroscientist Gustavo Turecki told the Gazette, “and this could be one way where you are more at risk of suicide.” Epigenetics is the study of how people’s environment or lifestyle can alter their DNA and, in turn, affect how their genes function and control behaviour. This particular study is the first of its kind to attempt to unravel the epigenetics of suicide. This study offers victims of abuse hope that understanding these epigenetic changes may someday lead to the development of drugs and therapies that can reverse the damage. “The social environment like childhood abuse can cause such a profound chemical change in DNA that stays for so long,” said Moshe Szyf, an epigeneticist in McGill’s department of pharmacology and therapeutics. “Why couldn’t an opposite social environment erase those marks? So the potential is there.” “We don’t know how to do it yet,” Szyf also told Canadian Press. “We might know in the future, but we don’t know how to do it now.” More immediately, child abuse expert Louise Newman, a professor of perinatal and infant psychiatry at the University of Newcastle in Australia, told CBC News the findings underscore the need for early interventions to prevent abuse. The Gazette agrees. As it stated in an editorial, “The new research, which clearly suggests that thousands of Canadian children could be at risk, points to the need for effective, accessible services to protect children in their early years, the time when they are most vulnerable to changes to the structure of their brains.” The study is published in the medical journal Nature Neuroscience. |
