The Correlation​ Between Abuse and Mental Illness

I’m a firm believer in specific events in our lives having the ability to affect how we respond and react to particular situations. That one can suffer through a traumatic period of time and learn about themselves. But there is that stage where you don’t realise what you’re going through will have a severe impact on your life.

Proceeding from the theme of My Mental Illnesses & My Younger Self post from last week, I now know how and why I developed these particular mental illnesses.

There are a lot of studies and articles, from not just professionals but also victims, that speak of how events in their childhood steamed the path for their mental health to decline. A common primary element of mental illness can be blamed for the abuse either witnessed and/or endured. It’s worthy to be reminded that abuse can be given in different formats; physical, verbal, emotional, psychological, etc.

Here are some links to a few sites that go further in detail of all the sciency side of it, if you would like to know more!

One in five women suicide because they saw domestic violence as children

Child Abuse Prepares the Brain for a Lifetime of Mental Health Issues

Police investigating 30 years of alleged sexual and physical abuse against children at mental health unit

How childhood trauma changes our hormones, and thus our mental health, into adulthood

Everything that happens can end up impacting us in either a negative or a positive direction, and the extent and duration can affect profoundly on our state of mind. A child that experiences trauma, naturally can’t process such damaging incidents as an adult would, and wouldn’t be able to realise that it isn’t right. A child’s mind is delicate, fragile, and needs to be handled with care. Therefore it can be presumed that abuse in any form can impact not just in the moment, for a few days or months, but can continue to disturb an individual into their adult years.

This post is part of a series where I will be reflecting back to my younger self, and how my mental illness developed. Next week I will be going in deeper about how abuse affected me.