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Structural brain correlates of childhood trauma with replication across two large, independent community-based samples
- Rebecca A. Madden, Kimberley Atkinson, Xueyi Shen, Claire Green, Robert F. Hillary, Emma Hawkins, Emma Såge, Anca-Larisa Sandu, Gordon Waiter, Christopher McNeil, Mathew Harris, Archie Campbell, David Porteous, Jennifer A. Macfarlane, Alison Murray, Douglas Steele, Liana Romaniuk, Stephen M. Lawrie, Andrew M. McIntosh, Heather C. Whalley
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- Journal:
- European Psychiatry / Volume 66 / Issue 1 / 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 January 2023, e19
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- Article
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- Open access
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Introduction
Childhood trauma and adversity are common across societies and have strong associations with physical and psychiatric morbidity throughout the life-course. One possible mechanism through which childhood trauma may predispose individuals to poor psychiatric outcomes is via associations with brain structure. This study aimed to elucidate the associations between childhood trauma and brain structure across two large, independent community cohorts.
MethodsThe two samples comprised (i) a subsample of Generation Scotland (n=1,024); and (ii) individuals from UK Biobank (n=27,202). This comprised n=28,226 for mega-analysis. MRI scans were processed using Free Surfer, providing cortical, subcortical, and global brain metrics. Regression models were used to determine associations between childhood trauma measures and brain metrics and psychiatric phenotypes.
ResultsChildhood trauma associated with lifetime depression across cohorts (OR 1.06 GS, 1.23 UKB), and related to early onset and recurrent course within both samples. There was evidence for associations between childhood trauma and structural brain metrics. This included reduced global brain volume, and reduced cortical surface area with highest effects in the frontal (β=−0.0385, SE=0.0048, p(FDR)=5.43x10−15) and parietal lobes (β=−0.0387, SE=0.005, p(FDR)=1.56x10−14). At a regional level the ventral diencephalon (VDc) displayed significant associations with childhood trauma measures across both cohorts and at mega-analysis (β=−0.0232, SE=0.0039, p(FDR)=2.91x10−8). There were also associations with reduced hippocampus, thalamus, and nucleus accumbens volumes.
DiscussionAssociations between childhood trauma and reduced global and regional brain volumes were found, across two independent UK cohorts, and at mega-analysis. This provides robust evidence for a lasting effect of childhood adversity on brain structure.
four - Pregnancy and childbirth
- Edited by Shirley Dex, Heather Joshi
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- Book:
- Children of the 21st Century
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 22 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 12 October 2005, pp 109-132
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Summary
The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) collected information about pregnancy and delivery retrospectively at 9-10 months after the child's birth. For this and other reasons, midwives and other clinical staff were not involved in the data collection, unlike the 1946, 1958 and 1970 cohort studies which started as birth surveys. This limited the potential for collecting reliable detailed information about topics such as complications in pregnancy and at delivery. Clearly, pregnancy and childbirth have got safer over time. In the 1946 birth cohort, 4.0% of babies died in the first week after birth, 3.3% in the 1958 cohort and 2.4% in the 1970 cohort (Williams, 1997). On the other hand, the MCS covered some issues not included in the earlier, more clinically oriented birth cohort surveys.
Many but not all of the topics in this chapter are monitored through routine data systems in the four countries of the UK. Birth registration and NHS maternity statistics systems collect information about trends in demographic structure and patterns of care at delivery, although the ways in which they do so differ between countries. What these routine systems do not provide, however, is much information about the social factors which lie behind these changes in care and in the population giving birth. In addition, NHS maternity systems are largely based on information about hospital care. They do not contain information about encounters which usually take place in the community, notably women's first NHS consultations about maternity care and their use of other services such as antenatal classes. The NHS records also contain only limited information about births outside hospital. The aim of this chapter is both to analyse the data about pregnancy and mothers’ use of services in their social context, and to relate them to the trends documented elsewhere.
The national service framework for children, young people and maternity, published in 2004, has a social as well as a clinical agenda (DfES and DH, 2004): ‘Women have easy access to supportive, high quality maternity services, designed around their individual needs and those of their babies.’ ‘Standard 11, maternity’ emphasises choice for women in planning their own care and choosing the place to give birth. It also prioritises the needs of marginalised women, particularly those from disadvantaged groups. Fieldwork for the first sweep of the MCS took place before most of these policies were implemented.
Preface
- Edited by Christina Pantazis, University of Bristol, David Gordon, University of Bristol
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- Book:
- Tackling Inequalities
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 July 2022
- Print publication:
- 12 January 2000, pp vii-x
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Summary
The idea for this book arose out of the Radical Statistics’ annual conference which was held in Bristol in February 1998. The conference, on tackling inequalities, attracted a record audience and, disappointingly, numbers were such that people were turned away. For this reason we decided to publish the contributions plus other contributions on the theme.
Radical Statistics
Radical Statistics is a group of statisticians and others who share a common concern about the political assumptions implicit in the process of compiling and using statistics and an awareness of the actual and potential misuse of statistics and its techniques. In particular, we are concerned about the:
• mystifying use of technical language used to disguise social problems as technical problems;
• lack of control by the community over the aims of statistical investigations, the way these are conducted and the use of the information produced;
• power structures within which statistical workers are employed and which control their work and the uses to which it is put;
• fragmentation of statistical questions into separate specialist fields in ways that can obscure common problems.
Our history
Radical Statistics was formed in January 1975 and is proud to have been a part of the radical science movement. This movement dates back to before the Second World War. Its most influential expression was in J.D. Bernal's book, The social function of science (1939). This argued that science was the motor of human progress and history. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other events led to the disillusionment and eventual collapse of this pre-war movement. Some years later, in 1969, involvement in the anti-Vietnam war campaigns led a new generation of young radical scientists to found the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS).
The idea that statistics can be used as a tool for social change has a much longer history and lay behind statistical developments in the mid-19th century. Some of these ideas surfaced anew in the 1970s in the form of a heightened interest in social statistics in general and social indicators in particular. Radical Statistics rejected the idea that statistics were solely for measuring the ‘economic’ well-being of the State. We felt that statistics should and could be used for ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’ purposes. Statistics should be used to identify ‘social’ needs and to underpin rational planning to eliminate these needs.