Posted by Noa on May 30, 2001, at 16:51:49
In reply to RYAN - Anxiety/Depression/ Somatoform, posted by willow on May 24, 2001, at 23:02:06
> How can chronic stress through abuse affect a teenager in their adult life??
I was helped to understand this by the author/physiologist Robert Sopolsky (Why Zebras don't get Ulcers). Apparently, repeated or chronic stress experiences can cause increased levels of cortisol (stress hormone) which can lead to deterioration of parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus. In addition, if one has to be hypervigilant to abuse, the parts of the brain that are useful in maintaining alertness to danger (such as the amygdala) become hypersensitive and even larger. This can lead to being overly reactive to percieved dangers in one's life, or even to learned helplessness.
He also explained using an animal model. In his field studies, he was looking for an animal model that paralleled a common human situation ---where we don't have the kind of acute survival-related stress that a zebra would have in running for its life from a hungry lion. He found a parallel in a community of baboons in Africa. The baboons had ample food supply and no threat of predators to speak of, ie, very little in the way of survival-related acute stress. What he did find was that in the absence of that kind of stress (the kind our bodies are made to deal with) the baboons created the kind of stress we humans have created for ourselves--social stress. In the baboon community, hierarchical status was an important factor, and the low man on the totem pole was regularly harrassed by the higher ups. This led to chronically elevated levels of cortisol in the low-status males, which caused suppression of muscle growth, and even loss of muscle mass, and permanent brain changes. The low status males became less and less able to cope.
poster:Noa
thread:193
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/child/20000813/msgs/202.html