Written by, Courtney Kidd, LMSW, SJS Staff Writer
Childhood abuse as a predictive variable in who will have an autistic child. A study put on by JAMA Psychiatry studied 50,000 women, looking at medical records, answered questions relating to childhood abuse(physical, sexual or emotional) and whether they had a child on the autism spectrum. The results could mean you’ll reconsider the spanking. Women who were abused as children were found to have a 1 in 50 chance of having a child with autism, as compared to 1 in 88(CDC, 2012). The more severe the abuse, the higher the chances became.
A few explanations have come up. The first is women who have been abused are more likely to make unhealthy choices, such as smoking, drinking, and drugs. This didn’t account for much in the study, about 7%. The other discussion was the long lasting impact that childhood abuse leave on a person’s body, specially the stress hormone. Our biology changes, and our environment can alter the balance of our brain chemicals. We are aware that a higher level of stress hormones can increase the chances of autism in the next generation. Children who are abused often have higher levels of these hormones, and can be linked with higher rates of depression, anxiety, mood disorders, etc.
This makes the need for education and intervention even more pressing. The long term effects of abuse is often disputed. The definition of what abuse is comes up a lot. Is abuse spanking your child? Does it begin when you raise your hand? Or does abuse start when it is repetitive, overly harmful and damaging? The more we understand about long term consequences might make us reevaluate just what it is we consider abuse.
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So, I’m curious, is the abuse variable related to past traumatic childhood abuse and the resulting physical and emotional consequences; or women whom have been abused, abusing the child themselves? Very interesting correlation, I’m interested in learning more.
This is so scary.
My aunt was abused as a child, now she has an autistic son. Recently in school we have been learning about epigenetics (which is incredibly scaring). This basically says that each human gene contains an on and off switch, traditional genetics says that once fertilisation takes place your genes are locked away safe. However epigenetics says that environmental changes can cause these genes to switch on and off. Then children inherit these switched genes. Perhaps the childhood abuse of children switches on the gene that causes autism. It would be interesting to see if this was the cause of the increased rates.
I am an autistic. Both of my parents were abused as children but my father experienced more abuse-beatings, watching other siblings beat, verbal, emotional, spiritual abuse from the father. He experienced abandonment and a lot of other things. My mom was raised by a mom who was also abused as a child and a father who allowed her to take over so to speak, him not doing any of the raising. It was very dysfunctional, the mother treating the father like a slave and a person who had no rights. Though her parents were not very physically abusive they did believe in hitting and spanking until the age on 19! My grandmother was a very cold woman and never hugged my mom or her siblings but once or twice their entire childhood. They were forced to live an austere existence and were alienated from other children in order to make them “godly” and instilled fear in them and said that god fundamentally hated them. She did not hug me until I was about 5 or so which I thought was strange because usually grandmothers like to hug their grandkids. I know autism is genetic but I also follow epigenetics and know that genes change quickly based on the environment. While I am a proud autistic this does not change the fact that I was born from chaos, both sides of my family suffering from mental illnesses like depression, bi-polar and obsessions. It is up to me to see the truth and not to try to cover for my family. They abused me throughout my entire childhood and I feel sorry for them.