Reaction to traumatic events can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder

While trauma in itself can pose risk to a child's healthy development, over thinking on such events makes the kid more prone to suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), says a recent study.

If they think their reaction to traumatic events is not normal, they become more likely to develop PTSD, the study published in a Journal  has found. Children begin down this route when they have trouble processing their trauma and perceive their symptoms as being a sign that something is seriously wrong.

While most children recover well after a traumatic event, some go on to develop PTSD that may stay with them for months, years, or even into adulthood. Lead researcher  said: "Symptoms of PTSD can be a common reaction to trauma in children and teenagers. These can include distressing symptoms like intrusive memories, nightmares, and flashbacks."

"Many children who experience a severe traumatic stress response initially can go on to make a natural recovery without any professional support. But a minority go on to have persistent PTSD, which can carry on for much longer," he said.

Researchers worked with over 200 children aged between eight and 17 who had attended a hospital emergency department following a one-off traumatic incident. These included events such as car crashes, assaults, dog attacks, and other medical emergencies. These young people were interviewed and assessed for PTSD between two and four weeks following their trauma, and again after two months.

The team split the children's reactions into three groups - a 'resilient' group who did not develop clinically significant traumatic stress symptoms at either time point, a 'recovery' group who initially displayed symptoms but none at the two months follow up, and a 'persistent' group who had significant symptoms at both time points.

They also examined whether social support and talking about the trauma with friends or family may be protective against persistent problems after two months. They also took into account factors including other life stressors and whether the child was experiencing on-going pain.

"We found that PTSD symptoms are fairly common early on, for example between two and four weeks following a trauma. These initial reactions are driven by high levels of fear and confusion during the trauma," said the researcher.

"But the majority of children and young people recovered naturally without any intervention. Interestingly, the severity of physical injuries did not predict PTSD, nor did other life stressors, the amount of social support they could rely on, or self-blame," he added.

"The young people who didn't recover well, and who were heading down a chronic PTSD track two months after their trauma, were much more likely to be thinking negatively about their trauma and their reactions - they were ruminating about what happened to them," he explained.

According to him, kids perceived their symptoms as being a sign that something was seriously and permanently wrong with them, they didn't trust other people as much, and they thought they couldn't cope.

In many cases, more deliberate attempts to process the trauma, for example, trying to think it through or talk it through with friends and family, were actually associated with worse PTSD. The children who didn't recover well were those that reported spending a lot of time trying to make sense of their trauma. While some efforts to make sense of trauma might make sense, it seems that it is also possible for children to get 'stuck' and spend too long focusing on what happened and why.

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Sleep can help PTSD patients process the horrific experiences

A sound sleep in the first 24 hours after suffering a trauma can help individuals with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to process the horrific experiences, a study has found. People with PTSD experience highly emotional and distressing memories or even flashbacks where they feel as if they were experiencing the trauma all over again. Sleep could play a key role in processing what they have suffered. ‘Our approach offers an important non-invasive alternative to the current attempts to erase traumatic memories or treat them with medication,’ said lead author Birgit Kleim from the University of Zurich. The findings showed that a good sleep can help weaken emotions connected to an existing memory, such as fear caused by traumatic experiences. In addition, sleep also helps contextualise the recollections, processing them as information and storing the memories.

 However, the process may take several nights, the researchers said. ‘The use of sleep might prove to be a suitable and natural early prevention strategy,’ Kleim added. For the study, the researchers showed participants a traumatic video. The recurring memories of the images in the film that haunted the participants for a few days were recorded in detail in a diary. Study participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One slept in the lab for a night after the video while their sleep was recorded via an electroencephalograph (EEG), the other group remained awake. The results revealed that people who slept after the film had fewer and less distressing recurring emotional memories than those who were awake. ‘This supports the assumption that sleep may have a protective effect in the aftermath of traumatic experiences,’ Kleim said, in the study published in the journal Sleep.

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Gene critical to process of 'memory extinction' identified

Scientists have discovered a gene that is critical to the process of memory extinction, the phenomenon where conditioned responses fade away as older memories are replaced with new experiences.

The study  has found that enhancing the activity of this gene, known as Tet1, might benefit people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by making it easier to replace fearful memories with more positive associations.

Researccher along with his team studied mice with the Tet1 gene knocked out. Tet1 and other Tet proteins help regulate the modifications of DNA that determine whether a particular gene will be expressed or not.

The researchers found that mice without Tet1 were perfectly able to form memories and learn new tasks. However, when the team began to study memory extinction, significant differences emerged.

To measure the mice's ability to extinguish memories, the researchers conditioned the mice to fear a particular cage where they received a mild shock. Once the memory was formed, the researchers then put the mice in the cage but did not deliver the shock. After a while, mice with normal Tet1 levels lost their fear of the cage as new memories replaced the old ones.

"What happens during memory extinction is not erasure of the original memory," he said. "The old trace of memory is telling the mice that this place is dangerous. But the new memory informs the mice that this place is actually safe. There are two choices of memory that are competing with each other."

In normal mice, the new memory wins out. However, mice lacking Tet1 remain fearful.

In another set of experiments involving spatial memory, the researchers found that mice lacking the Tet1 gene were able to learn to navigate a water maze, but were unable to extinguish the memory.

The findings suggest that a threshold level of methylation is necessary for gene expression to take place, and that the job of Tet1 is to maintain low methylation, ensuring that the genes necessary for memory formation are poised and ready to turn on at the moment they are needed.

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