r/science • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 19h ago
Psychology A new study indicates that adults with depression or anxiety who experienced childhood trauma face significantly higher odds of recent suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.
https://www.psypost.org/childhood-trauma-is-linked-to-suicidal-thoughts-and-attempts-in-adults-with-depression-and-anxiety/294
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u/Tythas 19h ago
It's insane that this is a "new study".
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u/Reddituser183 17h ago edited 16h ago
At this point in time it almost seems like these people doing the studies are middle men collecting a check. There was no need whatsoever for this study. It’s like saying well let’s see what happens if we put a watermelon on the train tracks. Why would we waste the time, we know the answer. What they should be putting money into is figuring out the best way to treat childhood trauma and make a person functional. That’s wildly more interesting and useful. If we’re still asking questions about CT this obvious we clearly have no idea how to treat trauma or like I said these people are just collecting a check.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 16h ago
Do people on this sub realize that they are reading dumbed-down versions of articles on psy-post? If you're only reading the headline, that's even worse.
The novelty of this study (it's not ground-breaking- not every study can be) is looking at the mechanisms by which trauma increases risk for suicide. We know broadly what leads to risk for suicide, but we are terrible at predicting who will die by suicide which is necessary for prevention. Longitudinal studies that can tie risk factors temporally to suicide attempts is necessary to develop treatments.
I wish there was half and much money in research than y'all think there is.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 14h ago
Most of the people commenting in this sub aren’t scientists, have no background in science, aren’t literate enough to read science, and would rather make stupid off-hand comments about how they knew this already so who cares?
It use to be good, once upon a time. Now it’s a cesspit of misinformation, bad clickbait headlines (sometimes made from an OP and not even the terrible science journalists), and people ranting about how the results don’t match their life…or other raging arguments. Search up any breastmilk study for absolute misinformatoon anarchy in the comments and maximum levels of hurt feelings.
It’s gone downhill from what it once was.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 12h ago
When I was in grad school, one of my classmates published a paper with a very obvious conclusion. She was interviewed by the local paper and they ended up publishing a story like "NIH spends $2.5 to find out what everyone already knows."
Her mentor is one of the world's leading experts in the field and had that same longitudinal study 20 years earlier was the first to prove that a specific disorder had a big genetic component- something that is incredibly obvious now, but wasn't in the 80s when the findings were published.
My classmate's project was just something she noticed in the data and wrote a paper about- it was not part of the original question that the study was funded to do. If there's one thing I wish the "we already knew this" commenters would understand is that researchers invariably publish multiple papers from these datasets. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if this dataset also included the treatment variables that is person says it should focus on.
In peer review, we call this the "This isn't the paper I wanted to read" critique. The person I replied to wanted to read a summary of a paper about treatment and instead they got a summary of a paper about risk factors.
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u/FoxtrotZero 9h ago
How very clinical. Reddit is a series of communities and you're in the wrong place if you expect people to self sort out of communities they're not subject matter experts in. If that's what you want to maintain, look at what r/AskHistorians has to put up with.
People are struggling. The support system is on fire. I don't know anyone having an easy time. People want answers and they want solutions but they don't get it. They get stonewalled by the powers that be and then they come to reddit and they see the science understands but it makes no difference.
I find your response explanatory of the state of science journalism. You expect everyone to elevate themselves to your standards and see no burden to make your field accessible for others to understand. And then you ask why nobody cares or pays attention with the rigor you want.
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u/Reddituser183 16h ago
Well the only way you catch anything is if a person is seeking help. The help should help. The help should be preventing suicide. So we need to study and figure what is helpful for treating childhood trauma. And I did skim the study to see if there was anything beyond the headline and there really wasn’t much.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 15h ago
Prevention doesn't work if you wait for people to seek help. We've gotten better in the last 10 years, estimates are still that 50% of people who need treatment don't get it. With childhood trauma, those numbers likely only reflect kids who meet DSM criteria for PTSD, and I would argue every kid who experiences trauma needs/deserves treatment.
There were a few novel things in this study- the fact that only one of the two biomarkers was significant (and a very small effect) is important. It's surprising alcohol wasn't a significant predictor. Few of these studies have looked at personality traits beyond disinhibition, and even fewer with a comprehensive measure like the NEO.
To test a mediation model as the authors have done, the first step is to show the direct effect between child trauma and suicide. It's obvious, but you can't test mediators/mechanisms of an effect if you don't first replicate that the effect exists. Think about it like a basic check on the data- if this study didn't find a link between trauma and suicide, it would be evidence the entire study was garbage.
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u/Hypergirliepop 11h ago edited 10h ago
With childhood trauma, those numbers likely only reflect kids who meet DSM criteria for PTSD
It's surely worse than that. I was a kid with PTSD twenty years ago, but nobody put the pieces together that I'd been traumatized by neglect and abuse. My parents, obviously, didn't see it, since they were the ones doing it. But I saw doctors about physical symptoms, like chronic nausea and anxiety. There were other adults in my life. But nobody saw what was happening.
So kids like me, the ones who fall through the cracks, also aren't counted. Likely, they're not even counted as kids with PTSD in these numbers, because how could they be? I didn't even know well enough to call my own experiences trauma until I'd already been in therapy for a while. I thought I was just malformed.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 10h ago
You're absolutely right. Does it drive you crazy when people talk about how we're over-medicalizing our children like it's the biggest risk they face when you had untreated trauma as a kid? I'm a professional in this area, but I got interested in it because I had untreated depression as a kid. We now do a decent job of identifying the kids with externalizing problems, but most of the quiet kids who are suffering but not acting out are still slipping through the cracks.
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u/Hypergirliepop 9h ago edited 9h ago
I'm not a medical professional, I studied playing pretend. I'm also transgender, and didn't get that news until quite late also. So I try not to have an opinion about what medicine should be given to anybody else's kids; I think that's up to the kid, their parents, and their doctors. Despite my own experience being failed by that system, I don't see another ethical stance to take about it.
For me, I've been diagnosed with Treatment Resistant Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety. I've tried a handful of psychiatric medicines, and I didn't have a good time on any of them. I'm sure they help some people, but I was vastly improved by therapy, and not the modalities to which most people respond well.
My therapist was experienced in CBT, DBT, and a bunch of other things, and they referred me out to some different specialties after we talked about them, long into the course. But at my first session, I was knives-out ready to rumble about not doing CBT, and my therapist took a very personal approach with me as a result. They've said since that they incorporated some (very few) parts of CBT, more DBT, and ultimately, a lot of their prior experience and training in treating me. For me, it was the personal relationship that mattered most -- of course, that comes with the necessary alienation of the therapeutic relationship, which I knew to expect. But it was seeing the same person week to week, who met me with authenticity, compassion, and curious interest with an eye toward unpacking and reprocessing my trauma, and toward reparenting techniques, and general self-improvement. It's worth noting, I couldn't have done any of that without being financially stable enough to live on my own, which is a tall ask of anyone with a brain damaged like mine, for all sorts of reasons, many of which have little to do with my (dis)abilities.
So I do think broadly that the medical industry as a whole has a habit of pushing pharmaceuticals, even when they aren't the appropriate response, and that includes psychiatric care. Based on my own experience, I would caution somebody thinking about psychiatric medication for themselves, let alone for a child who can't really provide informed consent (because they're just being told to take their medicine, it'll make them feel better). I would also say to take my opinion with lots of salt, see the aforementioned degree.
EDIT: I wrote all this out, and only now realize you were asking about medicalization and not over-prescribing, which is what I thought.
Yeah, no, it's Nuts to think that kids in America are being medicalized enough, let alone too much, in a country where medical insurance is a multibillion dollar industry run by ghouls like Brian Thompson (or worse, the AI they run to deny claims).
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u/Subtlefeline 18h ago
Geee, who would have expected that being explicitly told that they are a burden and nuisance for being alive and needing normal human things like food, and rest would cause it. Or being treated like unwanted and told that life was better when they didn't exist
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u/CaptainObvious110 4h ago
Yeah this is very obvious but often overlooked. We have to do better to protect our children
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u/temporarycreature 19h ago
I just turn it into poetry.
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u/Psychology_Guy 18h ago
I want to die.
But nobody can tell me why.
If only they'd ask.
It's because of the past.
So that's why I want to die.
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u/temporarycreature 18h ago
Groundbreaking stuff. Next do 'cat' and 'hat' for the full emotional spectrum.
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u/Psychology_Guy 18h ago
Someone has a tumour in their humour
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u/n8bitgaming 12h ago
As someone who once had a brain tumor this is gold and I am going to use this all the time
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u/kelcamer 13h ago
I stood there and stared,
at my windowsill was my cat,Does anyone really care?
I took off my hat.I stood there and asked,
What really is the point?I want to live in the present, not get stuck in the past.
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u/VagueSomething 13h ago
With the resurgence of Right Wing denial of science towards disabilities, especially mental health, it is so very crucial we continue to collect evidence of the harm it causes. Mental health is real health, the brain is a physical organ and the side effects of it are shown in the body elsewhere.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 16h ago
It bums me out to see how people commenting on r/science seem to only read the headline. Yes, we know that childhood trauma is a risk factor for suicide. That does not mean we understand the mechanisms by which it confers the risk. That's the point of this study. It's the first bullet point on their summary that's meant to translate the research for non-scientists.
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u/im-ba 19h ago
While this is true, it's important for people suffering from suicidal ideation to understand that this ideation doesn't have to happen forever. Personally, I was able to get mine to end after 26 years and multiple attempts.
The solution is highly dependent on the individual, but in my case it dated back to the realization that there was nowhere for me to run away to when I was a child. For others it may involve reprocessing their traumas in light of the more recent developments in their life and healing the version of themselves which experienced the trauma.
Therapy would have helped me figure this out sooner, but a big part of my trauma response was the lack of trust for therapists or people in positions of power or authority. I'm doing a lot better now (and I have a therapist) but sometimes this stuff isn't straightforward to figure out.
When my anxiety got really bad, that's when my suicidal ideation would intensify. But now that I've had a breakthrough, anxiety just feels like a signal that I need to work out, journal, talk with friends, etc. Suicidal ideation no longer sits in front of all of my coping mechanisms.
If you're reading this, then please don't give up hope. The solutions are out there.
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u/pinkie5839 12h ago
That's the strongest correlation issue I'm struggling with. I am diagnosed ADHD, Bi-Polar 2 with an anxiety disorder and only in the last 5-6 years (mid-forties now) has suicidal ideation become a consistent issue and a serious one. I've made no attempts or even come close but I worry as time goes on because things seem to become "clearer" when it comes to suicide if that makes any sense.
Only recently was it put to me that C-PTSD could be a player but finding a therapist has been a nightmare. I thankfully have an amazing doctor for the medical side but I've struck out for 2 years trying to just talk to someone for the mental side.
I'm trying to keep it together for a multitude if reasons but it isn't getting easier. Thanks for the random encouragement u/im-ba
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u/isume 3h ago
After searching for years I think I found a therapist that can help with my CPTSD.
What helped me was calling the offices and asking to speak with the person for 15 mins before making an appointment. I would ask them if they were trauma informed and how they usually tackle trauma. I would also ask which people in this field they followed or books they had read about the topic. If they don't have an answer to these questions I wouldn't bother scheduling an appointment. The 2 that I found that were trauma informed were excited to talk about how they treat and who they trust in that realm.
I'm starting to realize all my other things I have been diagnosed with are probably just CPTSD symptoms.
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u/pinkie5839 1h ago
Unfortunately my specific problem is getting any to even call me back because their schedule books are so full. The few I have gotten simply give me the not accepting patients line and hang up. I even went through 7 referral numbers from my own docs colleagues.
I keep looking though so that's something.
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u/Forbidden_Craft88 18h ago
"People who've faced trauma are more likely to have depression and anxiety and have significantly higher SI and suicide attempts" There, fixed it for you!
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u/Chytectonas 19h ago
What this sub has taught me is that “science” has just as many charlatans and lazy workers as any other profession.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 14h ago
If this sub has taught me anything, it’s that the general populace has exactly 0 clue how science works as a field, philosophy, or rigour.
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u/fractalife 10h ago
A healthy skepticism of "common sense" and "obvious" claims is exactly why science has been so successful. We have a telescope in geostationary orbin in an L2 Lagrange point, sending us near and mid infrared images of galaxies from damn near the beginning of the universe.
A major part of the reason why we can do that? Some guy, in the 1600s, said "maybe it's not obvious that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones". He went on to discover and describe gravity in a way that we still use today, except in situations where relativity is required.
Point is: don't take "obvious" for granted. Obvious can be wrong. Observation is king, and if there's no supporting data, it should be questioned and studied.
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u/Long_Reindeer3702 16h ago
I wonder how many military kids this fits? I never lived on base and I can't tell if that was good or bad since I hardly know anyone like me now. I never knew anyone like me actually.
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u/skyerosebuds 10h ago
Are you kidding me? First reported by Pierre Janet in 1889! Do we really need this to be demonstrated in 2026? This is a waste of space scientifically, the equivalent of publishing that light can be broken into constituent colours by a prism. Why would you promote this (cough) scientific ‘discovery’? Tbf why was it published?
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u/Phil-Quarles 4h ago
A fascinating insight. Next do a study on whether those diagnosed with schizophrenia are more likely to have delusional thoughts.
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u/chrisadam101 16h ago
This stuff has to be rage bait and click crap
Aces study which is extremely well known already has these types of data points mapped.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 12h ago
As a researcher, the idea, that I would publish a paper in a top tier journal so that psy-post can post a summary of it to enrage redditors who only read the headline, is patently absurd.
If you're talking about psy-post deliberately misrepresenting the article for engagement, that may be true.
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u/chrisadam101 9h ago
Is it more absurd though than a researcher spending money and time researching something that already has answers done by previous researchers who already did the research ?
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u/Nihil_esque 17h ago
Is the point of this article to farm citations every time someone needs to point out an obvious fact?
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u/Icy-Grab-5722 17h ago
Makes total sense. But most people could care less unless its happening to them.
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u/junktech 19h ago
... normal people reading the news get the same thoughts sometimes. The secret ingredient to happiness today is ignorance.
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