news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=Av._e5W11VPfnXelTuiZNcqs0NUE
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Suicide victims who were abused as children have clear genetic changes in their brains, Canadian researchers reported on
Tuesday in a finding they said shows neglect can cause biological effects.
The findings offer potential ways to find people at high risk of suicide, and perhaps to treat them and prevent future suicides.
And, the researchers said, they also offer insights into how neglect and abuse can perpetuate unhealthy behavior through the generations.
Moshe Szyf of McGill University in Montreal and colleagues studied the brains of 18 men who committed suicide and who were also abused or neglected as
children, and compared them to 12 men who also died suddenly but from other causes, and who were not abused, although some had various psychiatric
problems such as anxiety disorders.
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I have PTSD from things that happened in childhood. One of the things I often hear from others is "just get over it."
This is pretty clear evidence why that simply isn't possible.
It also exposes the lunacy of Church teachings that suicide condemns someone, since clearly changes in the brain caused by the actions of others
precipitates it in many cases.
From a genetic perspective, given that abuse tends to make people have more children at a younger age, I wonder if natural selection in combination
with abuse is proliferating the likelihood that people will abuse their children. Most children who were abused grow up to NOT abuse their children,
but a certain percentage do.
I guess this is also evidence of the damage child abuse does to society as a whole.
