Children may experience different kind of stress such as positive, tolerable and toxic stress.
Positive stress: It includes mild adverse events such as new school or new surroundings, loss of toys or favorite colors, making new friends etc. These events lead to minor physiological changes and with the support of adults, children learn to manage the stress and it is considered important for the normal developmental process.
Tolerable stress: It refers to more intense yet short lived stress such as failure in exams, death of loved one, accident or natural disaster. This type of stress can be managed by constant support from family and friends but sometimes these events leave lasting marks and converted into toxic stress.
Toxic stress: It accounts for the prolonged adverse events such as child maltreatment, neglect and abuse that adversely affect the mental health. Again, this type of stress is reversible with appropriate care and treatment however, if neglected can lead to permanent brain modifications.
• Toxic stress can lead to maladaptive changes that cause improper brain development.
• It disrupts brain circuits thus lead to stress and anxiety later in the life.
• Toxic stress in childhood sets up different threshold levels for adverse experiences and people become overly reactive for the particular situation.
• Chronic adverse events cause over production of stress hormone cortisol that suppresses the immune system and people become vulnerable to variety of health conditions such as liver and heart problems.
• Higher cortisol levels also lead to suicidal thoughts.
• Prolonged increase in cortisol levels can cause changes in the brain structures particularly the hippocampus that is involved in the memory formation. Therefore, adverse childhood events lead to memory and cognitive deficits later in the life.
Child maltreatment may seem trivial to adults however, it could have devastating consequences in adulthood. Therefore, as adults we should be vigilant in our interaction with the children to avoid such problems….
In the next article we will look into the findings of “The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study”. More than 17000 individuals participated in this study and it describes the connection between childhood stressors and adult health.
Reference: The Effects of Childhood Stress on Health across the Lifespan is a publication of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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