February 1, 2023 – Childhood stress can negatively change the brain, in line with a brand new study. It says that black children are more affected because they experience more poverty and hardship.
“The researchers analyzed MRI scans to identify small differences in the volume of certain brain structures. They said these could accumulate as children get older and play a role in the later development of mental health problems,” STAT News reported. “The discovery is part of a new area of ​​research examining how racism and other social factors can affect the physical architecture of the brain. It may help explain long-standing racial disparities in the prevalence of mental disorders such as PTSD.”
The study was published on Wednesday in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
Brain development is affected by “inequalities faced by certain groups of people,” even in children as young as nine, said Nathaniel Harnett, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and lead writer of the study. “If we treat the world colorblindly, we will not find mental health solutions that work for all people.”
The study used findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which the National Institutes of Health launched in 2015 to look at the brains and experiences of 1000's of American children into early maturity.
Brain scans showed that black children had less gray matter in 11 of 14 brain regions examined. Differences in eight of the 14 brain regions were attributable to childhood adversity, particularly poverty.