The concept of Latent Vulnerability is one way to think about how maltreatment exposure can calibrate brain systems, including the threat, reward and memory systems. In a threatening and unpredictable early environment these systems adapt, with potential benefits for the child in the short term. However, such changes may embed vulnerability over the longer term, increasing the risk that mental health problems will emerge when a child negotiates new challenges and stressors later in development. 

 

In this context it is important to think about the brain as a socially embedded organ. Mental health and wellbeing are intrinsically relational phenomena, and it is not helpful or accurate to think of them as ‘located’ within the child or their brain. Rather, as researchers and clinicians, we must delineate the complex relationship between the brain, childhood trauma, the social world, and mental health. The concepts of stress generation and social thinning will be introduced as two socially mediated mechanisms that can help link early adverse experience with later mental health outcomes.  

 

Collectively, findings from the neuroscience literature point to the importance not only of understanding mechanisms, but also of increasing our focus on preventative models of help following childhood trauma.

 

BSL interpretation will be available for those joining the seminar on a PC or laptop.

 

This is a free event held by the Anna Freud Centre.