Tea at Trianon: Childhood Maltreatment Linked With Multiple Mental Health Problems

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

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Childhood Maltreatment Linked With Multiple Mental Health Problems

From Neuroscience News:

Experiencing abuse or neglect as a child can cause multiple mental health problems, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The research, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, seeks to examine the causal effects of childhood maltreatment on mental health by accounting for other genetic and environmental risk factors, such as a family history of mental illness and socioeconomic disadvantage. The first-of-its-kind research analysed 34 quasi-experimental studies, involving over 54,000 people.
Quasi-experimental studies can better establish cause and effect in observational data, by using specialised samples (eg. identical twins) or innovative statistical techniques to rule out other risk factors. For example, in samples of identical twins, if a maltreated twin has mental health problems but their non-maltreated twin does not, the association cannot be due to genetics or the family environment shared between twins.
Across the 34 studies, researchers found small effects of child maltreatment on a range of mental health problems, including internalising disorders (eg. Depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide attempt), externalising disorders (eg. alcohol and drug abuse, ADHD, and conduct problems), and psychosis. These effects were consistent regardless of the method used or way in which maltreatment and mental health were measured. (Read more.)