Childhood trauma doubles risk of mental health conditions

Almost a third of young people in the UK experience trauma during childhood or adolescence that doubles their risk of experiencing a range of mental health disorders, a study funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and published in the Lancet Psychiatry has suggested.1

The study looked at data on 2232 children born in England and Wales in 1994-95 enrolled in the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study assessed by structured interviews at the age of 18 for trauma exposure, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), other psychopathology, risk events, functional impairment, and service use.

Almost a third (31.1%) had experienced trauma and one in four of these (7.8%) met the criteria …