An increase in mental disorders, drug abuse and violence among teenagers aged 21, according to researchers can be traced back to failure of the child’s parents to respond to create "a secure attachment" in the child’s earlier formative years. There is a wide chasm of difference between a stressed, neglected and abused child and those who happen to experience love and security.
Neurobiological reactions in a person that results in prolonged stress exposure exerts much influence in a person’s personality. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) normally associated with war veterans can be experienced by youngsters exposed to the stress of being partly ignored and abused by rod believing violent parents and their failure to satisfy the important needs of a growing child.
Researchers who tracked the lives of traumatized children born earlier until they become 21, found out the existence of behavioral and mental problems-antisocial tendencies characterized by irritability, aggression, and indifference to the welfare of others-their brains developed such high reactive state as if they experienced the way war veterans did. These children appears tensed, frightened and continuously prepared for imagined non-existent danger as those who have been in war. Veterans are well-trained but not these children.
Early childhood trauma from parental neglect, deprivation and mismanagement result in neurochemical reactions in the child’s brain. The brain undergoes rapid transformation in the early child’s life from two to three. There is brain damage; the more fear a young infant is exposed to, the greater damage to the brain function in latter life. Perpetual fear triggers "fight or flight reaction." Stress chemicals that put a child’s mind and body in a permanent alert status renders socialization and memory function dysfunctional. There is always an ever-present sense of danger hovering, nightmares, and lack of concentration (poor scholastic performance) and constant tension. They go around looking for trouble or hopes to find a violent incident in order for them to have satisfaction in it, and where they found none, they themselves initiate the violence which relieves their feeling of tension and fear. Attacking and attempting to kill someone brings to them a pleasurable soothing feeling derived from hormonal flow acting as natural opiates as drugs do. Violence tranquillizes them as it is a product of a natural neurochemical process in an abnormal brain function.
This problem behavior can be reversed in a situation where these youngsters could experience a form of "re-parenting" from loving supportive group of experts who become their new "attachment figure" in a rehabilitation center. They are helped to regulate their behavior, practice tension relieving methods, and acquisition of coping skills. And prepare them for future gainful employment in a highly competitive world.
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