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Not Child’s Play Brain development in children who experience trauma and abuse is altered in a way that leaves them more susceptible to substance abuse, according to a 2014 National Institutes of Drug Abuse (NIDA)-supported study conducted by the Harvard Medical School and Northeastern University. The changes include compromised social perceptual skills, inability to maintain a healthy balance between introversion and extroversion, and inability to self-regulate emotion and behavior, according to the NIDA. The study finds childhood maltreatment alters connectivity in nine cortical regions, with the greatest connectivity alterations in two regions in the brain that mediate perception and regulate emotions. The changes “may lead to more intense craving for drugs coupled with diminished insight into the consequences of such use,” writes Dr. Martin Teicher of Harvard Medical School in the NIDA-supported study, adding that they may also lead to “reduced ability to control impulses or to make appropriate decisions based on past outcomes.” Research: Brain changes from childhood trauma make people more susceptible to substance abuse

Connection between trauma, drug use In a 2003 study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined the relationship between drug use and 10 categories of “adverse” childhood experiences.The findings bore out “a strong, graded relationship to the risk of drug initiation from early adolescence into adulthood and to problems with drug use, drug addiction, and parenteral use.” Each adverse childhood experience increased the likelihood for victims to try drugs earlier by two to four times. Childhood trauma is attributed with “one-half to two-thirds of serious problems with drug use.” People with zero childhood traumas are seven to 10 times less likely to “report illicit drug use problems, addiction to illicit drugs, and parenteral drug use,” than people with five adverse childhood experiences.

Four different age groups were examined for the CDCP study, the oldest born in 1900. Adverse childhood experience formula scores showed a relationship to lifetime drug use.The wide temporal scope of the study also indicates a relationship between trauma and drug use, seemingly impervious to generational societal shifts. “The persistent, graded relationship between the [adverse childhood experiences] score and initiation of drug use for four, successive birth cohorts dating back to 1900 suggests that the effects of adverse childhood experiences transcends secular changes such as increased availability of drugs, social attitudes toward drugs, and recent, massive expenditures and public information campaigns to prevent drug use.”

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