Children: Mental vulnerability is in the genes

Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.

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MunichParental divorce, serious illnesses, bullying - some children find it difficult to overcome the associated emotional stress and even suffer permanent emotional damage.How much a child suffers also seems to be determined by his genetic make-up.

Many children today grow up in a difficult social environment: violence, arguments, loneliness and dissatisfaction are part of their lives from an early age. But not every child can deal with these problems equally well, some can barely cope with the negative experiences and suffer permanent psychological damage. The genes could play an important role in this, as new research results from the USA show.

Tiny difference in DNA

Scientists at Duke University have now identified a genetic variation, a tiny difference in DNA, that indicates a child's level of emotional vulnerability. “The results help to understand on a biological level what makes a child sensitive to positive and negative life circumstances,” says Dustin Albert from the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy.

For two decades, the researchers observed first graders who lived in an environment high-risk for mental illness. The result: 75 percent of the children who carried this gene variant developed severe psychological problems such as personality disorders, alcohol and drug abuse by the age of 25.

Strengthen the psyche early on

But there is hope for children with this gene variant: if the affected first graders took part in a prevention program to strengthen their psyche, only 18 percent of them suffered from mental disorders in adulthood.

The results are a first step on the way to individual treatment of mentally vulnerable children, says Albert. However, it is still too early for a broad screening to determine by genetic analysis which children need special support.

Source: Duke University press release (http://today.duke.edu/2015/01/vulnerable)

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