Tea at Trianon: Complex Trauma Linked to Cognitive Impairments and Mental Health Disorders

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, August 27, 2021

Complex Trauma Linked to Cognitive Impairments and Mental Health Disorders

From Neuroscience:

New research from King’s has explored whether different types of trauma confer the same risk of future mental illness, in the first study of its kind. The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, investigated the theory that traumas occurring at an early age, that involve interpersonal violence, and are repeated could represent a particularly detrimental type of trauma named complex trauma.

Participants were from the E-Risk Study, which tracks the development of 2,232 children born England and Wales in 1994-1995. They were assessed for complex trauma exposure (such as repeated child abuse), exposure to other non-complex traumas (such as car accidents), as well as mental health problems and cognitive function at age 18.

The researchers found that young people who had been exposed to complex trauma had more severe mental health problems and cognitive impairments, compared not only to trauma-unexposed peers, but also to those exposed to non-complex traumas. These difficulties were seen across several mental health disorders and cognitive domains.

The researchers also found that several early childhood vulnerabilities, measured at age 5, predicted later exposure to complex trauma, but not non-complex trauma. These vulnerabilities also largely explained the associations between complex trauma exposure and cognitive impairments. (Read more.)