Excellent article Larry!

Study Finds Prior Trauma Raised Children's 9/11 Risk

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: February 5, 2008


Preschoolers who witnessed the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade
Center or saw its victims were at high risk of developing lingering
emotional and behavior problems if — but only if — they had had a
previous frightening experience, like seeing a parent fall ill,
researchers are reporting Tuesday.

The study, the first of its kind among such young children in the
wake of the attacks, found that more than 40 percent who had such
sequential traumas suffered from depression, emotional outbursts,
poor sleep or some combination three years later.
By contrast, children who saw the attack or its victims but had no
earlier trauma showed few if any psychologically scars.

The study, appearing in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent
Medicine, suggests that very young children respond to trauma in the
same ways that adults do. If they are nursing a previous emotional
wound, the impact of some new scare or crisis is multiplied.

The findings "make a lot of sense, given what we know about how the
brain becomes sensitized to a traumatic event, and how there can be
a cumulative effect," said Dr. Bruce McEwen, director of the
neuroendocrinology laboratory at Rockefeller University, who was not
involved in the research.

In the study, researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine
and the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services in New York
surveyed the parents of 116 children who were 1 to 5 years old on
Sept. 11, 2001, and lived or went to school near the World Trade
Center. Some were in school very close to the site and saw people
jumping from the buildings, or a tower fall.

On standardized checklists parents recorded specific behaviors, like
whether the child continually clung to adults or refused to sleep
alone. Parents also noted whether their child had had previous
scares, from a dog bite, say, or a serious accident.

Children who had been rattled by a previous experience were about 20
times as likely to show signs of depression, anxiety, or attention
deficits as children who had not known a significant trauma before
Sept. 11.

"The optimistic part of this is that the kids who had no earlier
traumas were doing fairly well, even though we set the bar very high
for exposure to the World Trade Center attacks — I mean, some of
these kids were going to school practically across the street from
the towers," said the lead author, Claude Chemtob, a professor of
psychiatry and pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. His
co-authors were Yoko Nomura and Dr. Robert A. Abramovitz.

But for the children who were troubled after the attack, Dr. Chemtob
continued, "the response was dramatic, and it shows this connection
between what we consider garden-variety events, like a dog bite or
the illness or a parent, and larger outside traumas."

A truly frightening experience appears to heighten baseline activity
in circuits involving the amygdala, a subcortical area that
registers threat, and makes it harder for higher areas of the brain
to inhibit amygdala response. If the system is hit again by another
trauma, it can become chronically over-reactive, research suggests.

My comments:

First of all, I will fully agree with what Larry said:

"As usual, though, the researchers who studied the effect of 9/11 on
school children apparently never bothered to read Freud's and
Breuer's book "On Hysteria" which clearly explained the phenomenom
of psychological vulnerability to subsequent trauma. What is
especially aggravating is that nobody mentioned Freud's later
theories of primary and secondary repression, which the following
study validated perfectly!"

Than, I will draw your attention on a few facts that might have gone
unnoticed:

- The study found that more than 40 percent who had such sequential
traumas suffered from depression, emotional outbursts, poor sleep or
some combination three years later. The traumas or emotional scars
could have been as simple as a dog bite, say, or as severe as a
serious accident.

- The study also suggests that very young children respond to trauma
in the same ways that adults do. If they are nursing a previous
emotional wound, the impact of some new scare or crisis is
multiplied.

- The findings make a lot of sense, given what is know about how the
brain becomes sensitized to a traumatic event, and how there can be
a cumulative effect.

- A truly frightening experience appears to heighten baseline
activity in circuits involving the amygdala, a subcortical area that
registers threat, and makes it harder for higher areas of the brain
to inhibit amygdala response.

- If the system is hit again by another trauma, it can become
chronically over-reactive, research suggests.

It is interesting to note that all of these symptoms are behaviors
very often found in the daily life of autistic children. Could it be
that it might have some basis on a trauma that the autistic child
has suffered? And before you stone me to death defending the
mothers, I do not mean that. Read on and keep an open mimd.

What if the moment of birth is for a child a severe traumatic
experience and from that moment on, EVERY and ANY other traumatic
experience becomes a simple accummulation on top of the initial
trauma leading to a chronic over-reaction to any and every
additioanl trauma throughout the child's life???

What if autism is this simple accummulation of such traumas that
eventually cause the brain to construct a behavior that is
constantly busy to balance this state of traumatic anxiety, and
emotional pain, through a process that counteracts such anxiety and
emotional pain?

Could it be that autistics are not responsive when it comes to
emotions because emotions means the constant experience of fear and
pain???

Would it be possible, that the child's brain as a means of survival
and in an attempt to equalize and thus eliminate the pain, engages
in self-stimulation that has as target to create a feeling of
pleasure?

What if Freud was more right than anyone could thought when he spoke
of the Eros and Thanatos subconsious instinct. We seek pleasure to
eliminate pain, Thanatos is the pain, the fear of pain, the fear of
death, any and every trauma falls under this category. Eros is the
search for pleasure, self-gratification, the need for love, the need
for life, existance. If the existance is threatend by the fear
(Thanatos challenging Eros) then the survival instinct kicks-in,
creating a self-contained situation where the pleasure that is not
available in the outside world that surrounds the child, is replaced
by a pleasure that is internal, self-generated.

It is known that autistic children enjoy playing alone, they can get
lost in the pleasure of their owen self-generated 'play' a world
that only exists inside their minds.

Could it be that the autistic brain is actually an auto-ERO-tistic
brain, that desperately seeks ways to counter-balance the inetense
fear and emotional pain that the autistic child experiences every
day?

It is not uncommon that autistic children need an endless and
constant reassurence that they are loved, that they are wanted, and
that they are worthy. This constant need is in a way a search for
gratification. Knowing they are loved and wanted and worthy gives
one a sense of pleasure. If this gratification is not available to
the child, through the people that surround it, the child will seek
more and more pleasure that is self-generated.

Maybe this research will trigger other research that will eventually
show what many autistics already know. The world is a very scary
place, certainly for a child that has been accummulating traumas all
its life...

Star

--- In for-and-by-autistics@yahoogroups.com, "Larry D. Lyons"
<larryd552002@...> wrote:
>
> As usual, though, the researchers who studied the effect of 9/11
on
> school children apparently never bothered to read Freud's and
Breuer's
> book "On Hysteria" which clearly explained the phenomenom of
> psychological vulnerability to subsequent trauma. What is
especially
> aggravating is that nobody mentioned Freud's later theories of
primary
> and secondary repression, which the following study validated
perfectly!
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/research/05trau.html?
>
ex=1359954000&en=f24c970302f7f947&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=pe
rma
> link
>
> Larry
>