Childhood adversity leads to health problems later in life

UGA and the Franklin College welcome back alumna Sierra Carter (PhD, '16, clinical psychology), who will join the Department of Psychology faculty and become the next associate director of Center for Family Research in August. Carter is co-author of a new study that suggests growing up with negative events and in dangerous communities in early adolescence can alter an entire lifetime, particularly for Black men and women.

“Things that happen to you in childhood — from how you’re raised as a child to the environment that you’re in — can lead to long-standing issues,” Carter said.

The researchers relied on data from the UGA-led Family and Community Health Study. Beginning in 1996, the ongoing study follows more than 800 families, all of which had a fifth grader at the start of the study. The researchers reinterview participants every two to three years.

The present study found starting at age 10, children were already able to register when their environments and treatment around them were unsafe.

Unsafe community environments affected not only the way the children acted but also created a physical, inflammatory response in their central nervous system.

Later in young adulthood, these stressors on both body and mind translated to earlier and more frequent use of substances as a way of self-medicating.

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Image: Illustration by Kaiya Plagenhoef