New Delhi: For decades, schizophrenia has been blamed on everything from the “schizophrenic mother” to biology alone. Now a new US study has suggested something different: that social experiences such as childhood trauma, poverty, racism and discrimination can become “biologically embedded” in the brain.
the He studiespublished in the magazine JAMA Psychiatry On June 17, he showed that exposure to harmful “social determinants of health” is associated with neurobiological abnormalities in schizophrenia, including brain structure, function, and neurochemical levels. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of California-San Francisco and Carnegie Mellon University.
“What we wanted to know is how these environmental factors, such as stress, trauma, and poverty, can get under the skin, so to speak, and influence our biology,” Caitlin D. Boone, a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an article. press release.
View the full article
Scientists have long known that the conditions in which people grow up, in their professional and personal lives, have a significant impact on their health. Some studies even say that approximately 30 to 55 percent of health outcomes depend on social conditions. However, the relationship between these social experiences and mental health is much less known.
Can social pressures change the brain?
The study was the result of a systematic review of 114 studies analyzing more than 10,000 participants with schizophrenia or at risk of developing psychosis. Most articles focused on the impact of early life challenges including childhood trauma, along with a handful of articles addressing social disconnection, racism, discrimination, poverty, and food insecurity.
The results revealed that social determinants of health more often led to a reduction in the brain’s outer layer, also known as cortical thinning. Some areas of the brain even saw a decrease in volume. Adverse experiences have been associated with decreased structural connectivity between brain regions, altered patterns of brain activity, and abnormal levels of neurochemicals. All of these features are associated with schizophrenia.
However, researchers emphasized that there is no single known factor that causes schizophrenia.
“One way to understand this connection is to imagine that everyone has a cup, and everyone has different amounts of water in that cup, and maybe some cups are smaller than others,” Dal Bon said. “Adding these other factors, like trauma or poverty, is like adding more water to those cups. Eventually, some people’s cups will overflow faster than others.”
With their findings, the study authors want to stop viewing schizophrenia as an incurable brain disorder. They highlight that by recognizing the effects of social experiences, clinicians can find individuals at high risk for developing schizophrenia and even develop targeted interventions.
“We need to understand how we can build resilience in these individuals, whether through focused treatment, some type of medication, family or social support, or some other type of protective factor,” said Jessica Hua, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. press release.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
