http://my.excite.com/news/r/980217/15/news-stress
February 17, 1998
Stressed Babies May be Prone to Trouble Later
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Psychiatrists said Tuesday there
may be a physical basis linking stressed-out babies to personality
disorders in adulthood.
Babies who are made to sleep alone or are not picked up and
comforted enough may grow up susceptible to post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) and personality problems, said Dr.
Michael Commons of the Harvard Medical School, and
colleagues.
The idea that babies need physical contact is not new -- that is
why they are no longer swaddled in tight blankets and left to cry
for hours. But researchers speaking at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science said they
were starting to find evidence of physical changes in the brain
caused by stress in infancy.
"Parents in most cultures have infants sleep with them," Commons
told a news conference. "As an infant, sleeping by yourself is very
stressful. We can see this because infants cry."
Scientists have also found levels of the stress hormone cortisol to
be much higher in crying babies. Commons suggested that constant
stimulation by cortisol in infancy caused physical changes in the
brain.
"It makes you more prone to the effects of stress, more prone to
illness including mental illness and makes it harder to recover from
illness," Commons said. "These are real changes and they don't go
away."
He said his team was doing studies with Kenyans, people of
Mayan descent and residents of Boston.
In the West, children are encouraged to be self-sufficient and face
danger alone. "They don't have the emotional resources to seek
comfort and consoling and the experience becomes unspeakable,"
Commons said.
Other cultures teach infants to stay close and look to others for
emotional and physical support, he said.
"The infants sleep touching the parents," he said. "They are carried
around touching the parent or some family member."
Commons cited theories that such constant support kept down
levels of cortisol, and helped the cortical structures in the brain
develop better.
He said illnesses such as PTSD and phobias, on the rise in
industrialized countries such as the United States, barely existed in
more primitive societies.
But Commons conceded he had no proof of his theory, although
he planned more tests such as PET scans, which can show blood
flow in the brain and indicate what structures in the brain are
working.
But he said parents should think carefully about how they treat
infants. "I think infants should be rubbed and hugged and kissed,"
he said. Children in day care should not be put to sleep in separate
cribs, he said. "They should sleep touching each other."
Commons conceded the growing prevalence of post-traumatic
stress disorder could be because it had become fashionable to talk
about.
"I think the cultural fad of PTSD is probably a slight, slight
overreaction," he said. "But I work in a mental hospital and clinical
instances of PTSD and phobia are just way, way up. I think there's
a strong organic basis."
Kathy D.
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