Childhood Maltreatment Associated with Suicide Attempts
A history of childhood maltreatment increases the risk that a person will attempt suicide. Different types of maltreatment, such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect, often overlap. In a 2015 study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, researcher Nicolas Hoertel and colleagues used data from an epidemiological survey of 34,653 Americans to clarify the mechanism by which maltreatment is linked to suicide risk.
Hoertel and colleagues found that childhood maltreatment in general was associated with an increased risk of attempting suicide and an earlier age at first suicide attempt. The analysis controlled for demographic characteristics and psychiatric diagnoses. Most of the risk came from effects that were shared across all the types of maltreatment. However, sexual abuse directly conferred an additional risk of suicide attempt.
In an earlier study of 648 outpatients with bipolar disorder by this editor Robert Post and colleagues (led by Gabriele Leverich), 34% had a history of suicide attempts, and these participants had a higher incidence of traumatic stressors in childhood and more stresses at illness onset than those without a history of suicide attempts. A history of sexual abuse in childhood was also linked to an increased risk of a serious suicide attempt in the earlier study, which appeared in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2003.
Early Experiences Have Lasting Effects on DNA
It is well established that certain early experiences can affect a person’s risk of developing a mental illness. Adversity in childhood, including abuse or the loss of a parent, is a risk factor not only for diagnosis of a mood disorder, but also for a more difficult course of illness. This may occur through epigenetic means. Epigenetics refers to a process by which environmental factors can change the way that DNA is transcribed, for example through the addition of methyl groups to strands of DNA. This tends to inhibit DNA from being transcribed and producing protein growth factors and other neurochemicals that are important for development.
A study by Kieran J. O’Donnell and colleagues presented at the 2015 meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry investigated whether epigenetics play a role in the success of a parenting intervention called the Nurse Family Partnership. Participants were 27-year-olds born to women who had received the intervention or a control intervention. Genome-wide DNA methylation was measured in the 188 participants’ blood.
Analysis of the blood revealed that the Nurse Family Partnership intervention was associated with DNA methylation at 1015 sites across 593 genes. Some of these sites were enriched for certain neurodevelopmental processes. Maltreatment in childhood was also associated with methylation at 1552 sites across 878 genes.
Editor’s Note: The take-home message of this landmark study is that maltreatment in childhood exerts lasting effects on the genome via epigenetic mechanisms, but early positive intervention also exerts lasting epigenetic effects, which likely have a normalizing impact.
Childhood Maltreatment Leads to Inflammation and Depression in Adulthood
Researcher Andrea Danese discussed the influence of childhood maltreatment on inflammation in a symposium at the 2014 meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Danese indicated that inflammation is part of the normal immune system, which includes the blood brain barrier, recognition of self- versus non-self proteins, activation of cytokines and endothelial cells, and response by phagocytes and acute phase proteins. In an acute phase inflammatory response, the liver secretes proteins including c-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen into the blood, where their levels can be measured.
Normal amounts of inflammation can be protective, while excessive or persistent inflammation can be damaging and pathological. The inflammatory cytokines interferon gamma and tumor necrosis factor (TNF alpha) induce an enzyme called indoleamine oxidase (IDO) that shunts the amino acid tryptophan away from its normal path, which yields serotonin, so that it instead yields kynurenine and then kynurenic acid, which inhibits the action of glutamate at NMDA receptors. Kynurenine can also be hydroxylated and turned into quinolinic acid, which activates glutamate NMDA receptors and causes toxicity.
In addition, inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin six (Il-6) can cross the blood brain barrier and directly influence neurotransmission. Meta-analyses have shown that inflammatory markers CRP, IL-6, IL-1, and IL-1 Ra all increase significantly in depression. A direct demonstration of the relationship between inflammation and depression is the finding that when hepatitis C is treated using the inflammatory treatment interferon gamma, there is about a 30% incidence of depression, which responds to the antidepressant paroxetine.
Stress can also increase the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, driving inflammation, and decrease parasympathetic activity, resulting in further inflammation. In addition, glucocorticoid receptor resistance can develop, enhancing depression, and increasing inflammation. Thus there are multiple ways inflammation can develop.
Danese described a study from New Zealand in which 1000 participants were observed over several decades—from childhood through age 38. The small percentage of participants who experienced maltreatment as children (aged three to eleven) showed a linear increase in CRP in adulthood as a function of their histories of previous child maltreatment. The maltreatment included parental rejection in 14%, sexual abuse in 12%, harsh discipline in 10%, changing caretakers in 6%, and physical abuse in 4%. Childhood maltreatment was also associated with some unfortunate outcomes in adulthood, including lower socioeconomic status, more major depression, more persistent depression, more cardiovascular risk, and more smoking. In other studies, Danese found that compared with controls, patients with depression alone, and patients with maltreatment alone, a greater number of patients with both depression and maltreatment (about 30%) had elevated CRP.
Danese noted that in a study by Ford et al. (2004), recurrent depressions, but not single depressions, were also significantly associated with increased CRP. In a meta-analysis by Nanni et al. in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2012, Danese and colleagues found that across multiple studies, childhood maltreatment was associated with a twofold increase in the incidence of depression and a twofold increase in the persistence of depression (chronic depression or treatment resistance). The traditional optimal treatment for depression, combined psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, was also significantly less effective in those with histories of childhood maltreatment. However, psychotherapy alone was equally effective in those with and without childhood maltreatment.
Together these data suggest that childhood maltreatment, partly through an inflammatory pathway, results in multiple difficulties in adulthood, including depression and treatment resistance. These data speak to the importance of attempting to prevent maltreatment in the first place, and ameliorating its consequences should it occur.
Editor’s Note: In a 2014 article in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, this editor Robert Post and colleagues reported that childhood adversity (verbal, physical, or sexual abuse) is associated with increases in medical comorbidities in adult patients with bipolar illness, and it is likely that inflammation could play a role in some of these medical conditions.