Most therapists intuitively know from their clinical experience that emotional stress can lead physical illness in our clients. Now, recent research supports this interconnection between emotional and physical health.
The "ACE study" (The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health) by Vincent J. Felitti, head of the department of preventive medicine at Kaiser Permanente Medical Foundation in California, indicates that children who have severe emotional stressors while they are growing up will be less physically healthy later in life than adults who did not suffer similar stress in childhood. Emotional stress in childhood--divorce, abuse, emotional and physical neglect, or growing up with a family member who suffers from mental illness or an addiction--puts children at risk for cancer, heart disease, emphysema, or chronic bronchitis when they grow up, even if they do not engage in unhealthy behaviors such as smoking or drinking.
Scientists tell us that early mental or emotional trauma can create lasting changes in the biochemistry of the brain and of other parts of the body. Even hearing parents argue heatedly can affect the development of hormone receptors in a child's brain which in turn affects the child's ability to regulate stress. This child may become jumpy or distracted in school and later on may hit or yell at her own children-thus perpetuating the cycle of emotional trauma across generations.
Predictably, some doctors at Harvard Medical School believe the best solution for early childhood stress lies in pharmaceutical drugs that purportedly target mechanisms in the child's brain that get overloaded by stress. Other medical researchers have come up with a safer and more practical solution. They would intervene by changing the behavior of parents who are (often unintentionally) subjecting their child to emotional stress. These researchers conclude that therapy with children experiencing emotional stress at home should also include parents.
Family therapy, which focuses precisely on changing parental behaviors that are stressful to children, would thus appear to help a child not only to be emotionally healthier but also to be physically healthier later in life. In my experience as a family therapist, I have found that unexpected factors can put severe stress on a child. For example, parents who share too much with their child about their own troubles--whether having a bad day at work, health problems, marital discord, or financial woes--can inadvertently put emotional stress on their child. When parents become more positive around their child, telling them only the good things about their day and noticing the child's positive qualities more often, the emotional stress on the child is lifted. While these small changes in parent-child communication have an almost magical effect in improving a child's current behavioral or emotional issues, they might be instrumental in helping a child be physically healthier in the future as well.
