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Final Thoughts, and Some Hope

I didn’t research this subject because I thought that it would lead to a bright, hopeful conclusion. I also didn’t choose this topic because I thought it to be hopeless and blighted: I simply went into it looking for answers, and if those answers could lead to something more productive for those who had already been so gravely harmed by others. 

Our genetic codes, and the ways in which our brains and bodies work for the rest of our lives (and our offspring’s lives) can be influenced by traumatic experiences. This is a strong and rightfully scary message, but it has the implication that such individuals, like Genie Wiley, are doomed to a life not only of incurable trauma, but also a genetic legacy of torment. This, however, is not the case: or, at least, it is not the end of the story. 

Because epigenetics itself is a new and only recently unfurling science, little is solidified about it’s workings, and even less is known about the ways in which it can be “undone,” so to speak. That isn’t to say that there is no research out there seeking the answer to the question that I hoped from the beginning there would be an answer to: is there a way to undo this genetic trauma? If the mind cannot be healed, can at least the genome? Epigenetics may be a strong contributor to the “cycle of abuse” that permeates many of the stories that I have read in my research, but can that cycle be stopped before it’s too late?

Researches at the University of Zurich completed a study that implied that behaviors caused by traumatic experiences in a person’s early life can in fact be reversed, and the methylation of genes caused by trauma can also be reversed, both through positive and enriching environmental conditions. Before this study, pharmaceutical drugs had shown some effect in reversing gene changes due to epigenetics, but there had until now not been any evidence pointing to environmental and lifestyle changes also being effective. 

Is this an end-all, be-all answer? Of course not: this is but one study of what is sure to be a future deluge of studies done on the subject, correcting, disproving, and pushing the science into the full light of truth. It may not be the complete picture, or the only answer, but it is a gateway to one. If nothing else, it can assuage a heavy heart that the same trauma that can change our genes for the worse can also potentially be absolved through care, comfort, and affection. 

http://www.media.uzh.ch/en/Press-Releases/2016/reversal-of-trauma.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/npp201687

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Case Study #2: Candace Newmaker, and the Consequences of False Science

Genie Wiley represents an intensely disturbing and, thankfully, rare level of child abuse. After reading about her and the horrors that she went through, I was interested in getting examples of children who were not abused to the same extent, but still suffered extreme consequences as a result. 

With this I came upon the story of Candace Newmaker, and the tragedy of an ongoing and encouraged form of abuse that is used and masked as therapy even today. 

Candace Newmaker was five years old when she was separated from her biological parents and adopted by a single mother and nurse practitioner, Jeane Newmaker. From the beginning Jeane complained of Candace’s behavior and took her to several doctors complaining that she had “Reactive Attachment Disorder,” a controversial diagnosis often given to adopted children.

Reactive Attachment Disorder (or RAD as it is often shortened) is a rare psychological attachment disorder that results in the child being unable to form early bonds with their parents, and as such often live the rest of their lives with no way to effectively attach to and create emotional ties with other people: this, of course, and result in a very disturbed and callous, unemotive child, or a child who is violent and manipulative as a result of being unable to empathize with others. Most of the early work done in describing this disorder was through case studies of orphans surviving in extremely deprived and understaffed orphanages after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While the disorder itself is well-documented and scientifically supported, the so-called attachment therapy that was developed in response to completely unsupported notions of adopted children being inescapably linked to this disorder. Parents like Jeane Newmaker, frustrated and seemingly unsympathetic towards the normal behavioral problems exhibited by her traumatized child, was ensnared by the Evergreen Model. 

This “alternative” child psychology practice takes it’s name from the handful of clinics practicing it in Evergreen, CO, and is a form of attachment therapy. (Please note: while attachment theory is a well-established and accepted psychological phenomenon, attachment therapy is widely derided by the scientific and therapeutic models in this country and many others). This clinic, like others who practice attachment therapy, charge sums of upwards of $7000 to parents who are often out of their depth in caring for a traumatized child, claiming to heal them fully in week long intensive sessions. This type of therapy uses methods like forced holding or compression therapy, rage reduction, and re-birthing therapy, all of which are considered by professionals to be abusive and contrarian to actual methods of therapeutic intervention.

In Candace Newmaker’s case, re-birthing therapy was used in order to make her receptive to being “re-parented” by her adoptive mother, forcing her to revert to a state of infantile reliance on her mother by being completely controlled by her: needing her mother’s permission to use the bathroom, eat, and speak. The Evergreen Clinic supposed that once she had been reduced to her basic, pre-trauma state, she would be receptive to forming an attachment with her adoptive parent. 

In what would be the cause of her death, Candace was wrapped in a sheet and covered by cushions that were held down by the hands and feet of the adults in the room. Candace was forced to “push” her way out, choosing to be “reborn” as a new child, while being held down forcibly by the “therapist,” assistants, and her adoptive mother. Over more than an hour, as Candace screamed, pleaded, and cried out for help, all of her attempts were ridiculed and derided: in the attachment therapy model, a child who cannot free themselves from the confines of the blanket “womb” does not want to complete therapy, and is being disobedient. Even after begging for air and screaming that she was dying, the adults would not relent. Eventually, after Candace had stopped struggling, the adults left her to lie for five minutes. When they returned to the room, she had died from asphyxiation.  

Candace’s story, heartbreaking and enraging, proved to me the dangers of these alternative facts that we’ve been taking about all semester long. A false ideology was developed to “help” children who had already been fundamentally altered by their experiences with trauma, and succeeded only in causing their furthered suffering. Though this type of “therapy” was subsequently banned in Colorado after Candace’s death, it is still legally practiced in other parts of the world, and has a devoted following of parents who claim it has “cured” their troubled children of behavioral difficulties. 

In search of answers to the question of epigenetic reversal, I found one approach that proves beyond a doubt that, though care and love may not be enough to completely cure a person of their inherited trauma, it’s opposite can only lead to tragedy. 

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Study #2: Epigenetics Profiles in PTSD

A study that I had found to back up the Pollak results seemed to represent similar findings: this time in human beings with no animal study equivalence. This 2013 study compared peripheral blood in adults with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who had a abusive childhood (vs. controls) with adults presenting PTSD who did not have an abusive childhood. The findings of this study showed that those who had abusive childhoods showed significantly higher rates of DNA methylation-- so high, in fact, there was only a %2 rate of overlap between the two populations. This contributes to the understanding of the ways in which psychiatric disorders are at risk to develop, how they can develop from different circumstances, and implies the need for development of more personalized medication approaches in treatment. 

Below are figures from the study, along with a link to the PubMed page.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23630272

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Case Study #1: Genie Wiley

After reading the first article, which detailed the epigenetic consequences that are thought to result from child abuse, I was interested in finding case studies that seemed to represent those findings. Of course, the sad state of the matter is that there is a seemingly endless amount of material to pick from, ranging from day-to-day forms of abuse and the shocking, unthinkable neglect that left me nauseous to read. 

Gene Wiley represents one such case that I will certainly never forget. Born in 1957, Genie’s abusive and controlling father was given the impression that she was born severely handicapped, and would never walk or talk. He kept her locked away in a barren room containing little more than a cage-like crib, and a potty chair that she could be strapped to. He forbid her mother and older brother from speaking to her or touching her, and she was not allowed to try and verbalize: if she did, her father would growl and scratch her as if a dog. She was fed only once a day, and in complete silence: even at the age of thirteen she was given only soft or liquid foods. She was never given playthings and only rarely allowed to stand and walk on her own. There were speculations that she was also sexually abused. No one in the house was allowed to speak, or they would be beaten by her father, preventing her from hearing any sort of meaningful speech that she might acquire. 

Genie’s mother eventually made a bid to get out of the home, bringing Genie with her to a social services office. There, child protective services was immediately called and separated her from her family, believing her to be around 6 or 7 years old. Upon the discovery that she was actually 13, she was immediately taken to UCLA Children’s Hospital.

Over the next five years Genie would remain at the hospital, and different scientists would study her to learn about the effect such extreme abuse had on her development, and if she was able to heal. Researchers determined that Genie had missed the integral period of infant development that would allow her to acquire a first language, and as such she was never able to become fully verbal. Though she gained some control over her incontinence, she never mastered the skill, and her motor abilities remained limited. She was able to master chewing and swallowing, but never gained a full sense of situational awareness (i.e. understanding when her body was hot or cold, if she was meeting someone different, etc).

For the purposes of my research, Genie’s experience seemed to answer one very basic questions: are abused children able to recover fully from their circumstances, or are their genes and development irrevocably changed? Genie demonstrated that in some ways developmental skills are able to become acquired even past the normal age of development. She also shows, however, that advanced and prolonged traumas change the ways that a person’s brain, nervous system, and physiology present, and those cannot be corrected through warmth and love. 

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Images used to explain Pollak’s study, taken from http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes

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The Initial Descent

After deciding on my subject matter, my first step was to find articles on Google Scholar that could help me to add cited facts to the case studies that I had been reading about. The first I found was titled “Abuse Casts a Long Shadow by Changing Children’s Genes,” posted on PBS. The article details a few different studies conducted on the genetic implication of abuse, using human beings and rats.

A 2005 study by Moshe Szyf at McGill University in Montreal held the implication that abused rat babies developed epigenetic changes in their  NR3C1 gene. Their mother and father did not have the same methyl groups attached to the gene that their babies did, and the only thing that had changed in the upbringing of the parents and the babies was the inflicted abuse. While science has already established that the NR3C1 gene can become methylated through environmental factors and drugs, this discovery that upbringing can bring about the same sort of epigenetic changes is groundbreaking.

Seth Pollak, a researcher at University of Wisconsin, decided to see if the same results found in the rats could be found in children. He tested the DNA of two separate groups of children: those from normal, non-abusive homes, and those who had been identified by Child Protective Services as having a history of abuse.

What was fascinating about this data was that not only did the children with an abuse history show methylation on the NR3CI gene, they showed it in exactly the same way the abused rats had. In a nutshell, this means two important things for the future of these lifeforms. One, this methylation of the NR3C1 gene causes cortisol, the hormone responsible for preparing our body to respond to a threatening situation, to become rampant throughout the body with little control. Two, this overabundance of cortisol not only seems to prime the child to respond to even benign situations as threatening, but also seems to cause heath problems in their adult lives.

In this article Pollak references other studies conducted on adult survivors of child abuse who demonstrate high rates of heart disease and type II diabetes in comparison to those who did not have the same childhood history. 

These findings are compelling, and seem to offer a solid epigenetic link between child abuse and future psychological and physical health problems. However, I would be interested in knowing how the other surrounding factors of the child participants in Pollak’s study were handled. For example, the abused children might be coming from backgrounds of bad neighborhoods with high rates of environmental toxins in comparison to the children from non-abusive households. This might have just as much affect on the stress receptors of the abused children, and seems unlikely to not factor into the cortisol problems.  

Link: 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/epigenetics-abuse/

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Purpose Statement

Through my research this semester, I decided to focus on the effects of child abuse on the genetic code of an individual. My particular focus was on practices within pseudo-psychiatry that have been condemned by many professionals, and yet are still practiced by those who claim that their methods are misrepresented. My purpose through this website is to post information relating to noted cases of extreme abuse, and the consequences that result from such abuse epigenetically.