• Go Back

Reprinted from:
mercola.com/2002/jan/12/abuse_suicide.htm

JAMA December 26 ... Review By Dr. Mercola

Adults who suffered abuse or other negative experiences during their childhood are more likely than their peers to attempt suicide decades later.

The researchers found that individuals with at least one type of harmful childhood experience were two to five times more likely to attempt suicide. For example, those who reported being emotionally abused as a child were five times more likely to report a suicide attempt, while those who reported having had parents who divorced or separated during childhood were nearly twice as likely to report a later suicide attempt.

People who experience several traumatic events may be 30 to 50 times as likely to attempt suicide at some point in their life -- either in childhood or adulthood -- as those with a more carefree past, the researchers estimate.

The researchers evaluated more than 17,000 healthy adults who visited a primary care clinic in California between 1995 to 1997. The adults were asked to report whether they had experienced eight various harmful experiences as a child, including sexual, emotional or physical abuse, parental separation or divorce, witnessing domestic violence, and living with family members who were substance abusers, mentally ill or criminals.

The investigators found that 3.8% of the adults reported they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives, with women three times more likely than men to attempt suicide. Two thirds of the adults who had attempted suicide had experienced at least one of the negative experiences during their childhood.

For example, Dube said, only 1.1% of adults who reported no negative childhood experiences attempted suicide. In contrast, 35% of adults who reported seven or more negative childhood experiences had attempted suicide.

Early exposure to these negative events may disrupt the proper development of the neural pathways within the brain, affecting subsequent mental health.

Disturbingly, 64% of the healthy adults in the study reported they had experienced one of these events, making the potentially increased risk of attempted suicide fairly widespread.

JAMA December 26, 2001;286:3039-3096



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DR. MERCOLAīS COMMENT:

This study hits home for me, as it was only a few years ago that my mother went through a severe depression in which she had multiple suicide attempts despite being on medication.

If it werenīt for bioenergetic therapies, I donīt think she would still be alive today. We did not use EFT for her, because I did not know it at the time. But it would absolutely be my first choice today.

My mom fit the classic picture described above and had a terribly abusive childhood. The unfortunate sad reality, as the article points out, is that this is the norm, not the exception.

Nearly two-thirds of people have suffered from emotionally abusive childhoods.

Fortunately there is good news. You donīt have to run the risk of suicide or live a chronically unhappy life. There are easy, simple, inexpensive and permanent non-drug solutions.

One of the first steps you can consider is viewing the EFT videos from a workshop that I put together late last year.

Reprinted from:
mercola.com/2002/jan/12/abuse_suicide.htm

Back To Top