News

In “Well,” the New York Times (11/29, Bakalar, Subscription Publication) reports, “The daughters of women exposed to childhood trauma are at increased risk for serious psychiatric disorders,” researchers found after studying some “46,877 Finnish children who were evacuated to Sweden during World War II, between 1940 and 1944.” Investigators also “tracked the health of their 93,391 male and female offspring born from 1950 to 2010.” The study revealed that “female children of mothers who had been evacuated to Sweden were twice as likely to be hospitalized for a psychiatric illness as their female cousins who had not been evacuated, and more than four times as likely to have depression or bipolar disorder.”The Connecticut Post (11/29, Cuda) reports that researchers from the National Institutes of Health were among the study authors. In a news release, Stephen Gilman, of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said, “Here, we found evidence that a mother’s childhood traumatic exposure – in this case separation from family members during war – may have long-lasting health consequences for her daughters.” (SOURCE: APA Headlines)