One year ago I wrote about a study that linked trauma during childhood to increased risk for certain diseases later in life. The study in question was done in humans and I compared that research paradigm with the cruel experiments done on animals to imitate child abuse and neglect.
By comparison, other perhaps less creative and certainly less compassionate people try to create animal "models" of child abuse and neglect by subjecting baby animals to maternal deprivation or by purposefully taking healthy babies and putting them with aggressive adults. If the baby animals used in these terrible experiments survive, they suffer from a range of physical and psychological pathologies, conditions that are rarely acknowledged or treated. The outcome has many similarities to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Studies that explicitly examine post-traumatic symptoms in elephants, chimpanzees and other animals only serve to bolster this claim.
Revisit the original story to read more about the trauma-disease link.
Trauma in early life, disease in later life
