Running head: EFFECTS OF CHILDHOOD NEGLECT 1

The Effects of Childhood Neglect on Psychosocial Development

Erika Hulse
Salt Lake Community College
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Abstract

Early childhood neglect plays a huge role in psychiatric disorders in adults. There is a

huge prevalence in child neglect and the reduced brain activity. To provide better analysis, this

literature review explains and provides sufficient detail about how detrimental early childhood

neglect is to developing children.

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The Effects of Childhood Neglect on Psychosocial Development

Early childhood neglect interferes with a lot of the brain processing and development,

including the overall social interactions as the child grows into early childhood and adolescence.

The interactions between an infant and parent(s) is extremely important to the way the child

learns how to interact with others. Through research, neglect does not only refer to a single child

being neglected by parents, but multiple children in foster homes and orphanages who are all

suffering from neglect by caregivers. It is important for babies and young children to establish a

good support system, so that they are able to move onto the next vital stage in life. Introducing

Erik Ericksons developmental stages, these children will most likely be stuck in the first stage of

his psychosocial development theory, Trust vs. Mistrust. In this situation stuck is meaning to

have a distrust for individuals in the world, rather than leaving that stage and being able to trust

others (McLeod, 2017). Infants and young children are already very hesitant about the things

around them, and are very clueless. Having a stable and supportive caregiver is very important.

With infants who are able to achieve this stage, they move through it being able to carry on

relationships with others. Neglect in early childhood, and more specifically in orphanages,

effects the cognitive and socioemotional development, negative psychosocial experiences have

an impact on brain structure, and neglect is associated with and increases the vulnerability to

psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

(PTSD).

Infants and young children are more susceptible to deficits in their psychosocial

development due to the fact that most of their developmental stages have not been established

yet. Moreover, when a child/infant is neglected, for example living in an orphanage or the foster

care system, they are not getting those basic needs from an actual parent. To include, they are not
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getting that one on one interaction with someone who cares a whole lot about them. The child is

inevitably stuck in the stage of not being able to interact with others. This will carry into

adulthood where the child could continue to decline and become an adult who is unable to carry

out daily functions from a psychiatric standpoint, which could lead to unproductiveness (Frank,

Klass, Earls, & Eisenberg, 1996). Gathering people, especially young children in tightly packed

living situations is very problematic. Not only do these children experience psychosocial and

cognitive deficits, but they are also experiencing medical needs and illnesses that are not always

brought up, which could be lead further into a dangerous psychiatric disorder. Most of the

children being placed in orphanages are extremely young, which is when the infant/childs brain

is more susceptible to maladaptive learning. To continue focus, the main problem with this is the

inconsistent caregivers and those specific caregivers who are not serving a vital part in the

childs life. On average, every two years of a childs life they had been taken care of by roughly

24 different adults. For example, by age 2 they had been taken care of 24 adults and by age 4

they had been taken care of by 50 different adults (Frank et al., 1996). The study conducted by

Frank et al. in 1996 showed that many of these children developed generalized anxiety and

fearfulness. To continue from their study they found that, Infants could form only partial love

attachments, and were unprepared for reciprocity and limitations of family life (p. 572). When a

child is not given love and not shown how to show love themselves, they are clueless and are

incapable of such. Also found in the study, that many symptoms and onset of disorders lead into

adolescence. This includes the inability to stay focused and organized, inability to react normally

to social situations, and showed very needy behavior. This does not only happen in orphanages,

but there have been cases in the foster care system as well. A big amount of the children placed

in the child welfare system are likely to show psychopathology. 40% to 65% of the children in
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the foster care system are in need of mental health or related services (Clark, Lee, Prange, &

McDonald, 1996, p. 40). The more a foster child is moved around, put into programs that are not

helping them, and growing further from their actual blood relatives they are at an increased risk

of need psychological intervention, or more intense intervention if already needed. A child, and

even growing into adolescence, is in need of a support system. They are in need of parents and

not many different people. Without these types of figures, they are unable to move on from

mistrusting everyday things and anyone they come in contact with. Having a single parent(s)

figure is not something that the culture is needing, this is an innate biological necessity.

The brain is very susceptible to stress and can be altered and somewhat changed

anatomical due to stressful experiences. Not only is it just the stressful experiences, but also

those that have been occurring for a long period of time, show detrimental effects on the overall

brain activity. To be specific, children who remained at an institution were compared to those

who had just been placed in the foster care system which was, Suggesting potentially impaired

communication between local and long-distance brain networks in these children

[institutionalized children] (Stamoulis, Vanderwert, Zeanah, Fox, & Nelson, 2015, p. 1). When

a child experiences emotional and social deprivation this leads to the differences in white matter

tracts. White matter is the location where nerve impulses are carried between neurons. The more

specific tracts that are effected for those who have been institutionalized are the corpus callosum

and the tracts that are involved with the limbic and frontostriatal circuits, which are the specific

brain regions that deal with emotion and stimulations that involve control and self-regulation.

Tests such as MRIs were performed and showed surprising results. There was a substantially

lower volume of cortical thickness in the prefrontal temporal and parietal regions of the brain in

those children who had been institutionalized at an early age, as opposed to those who were
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placed in the foster care system. Furthermore, there were less cerebellar and gray matter volumes

(Stamoulis et al., 2015). It had also been shown that those who were placed in foster homes more

quickly were able to show tests that revealed the presence of changed brain activity and had a

higher local network coherence. Explained by Glaser in 2000, following child neglect, there was

a reduction in brain volume, which includes biochemical, functional, and structural changes.

Also, mentioned by Glaser in 2000, child neglect is ultimately preventable, and is not always the

intent by the parent to harm the child. Many parents do not realize that neglecting a child is in

fact child abuse. During the first year of life, the volume of a human brain increases more than in

any other developmental stage. Most of the brains functions are being developed in the first

couple years of life, which is why it makes sense that learning and going through proper

psychosocial stages is extremely important to infancy and early childhood. There are things such

as sensitive periods in a childs life that are more important than others. These include

independency, opportunity, needs, and vulnerability. These sensitive periods can only be

established in the first couple years of life, which is why skipping the steps of stages is so

detrimental to a childs overall development.

Child neglect, or more specifically know as early life stress (ELS), has been associated

with the vulnerability to develop psychiatric disorders, along with other medical disorders that

follow. These include, but are not limited to, major depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and

possibly even schizophrenia (Nemeroff, 2016). A study conducted by a health maintenance

organization in San Diego assessed 8 early life stressors. The test conducted showed that 64% of

the respondents had at least one life stressors. Those with greater than or equal to four stressors

showed an increase in depression, anxiety, panic attacks, etc. Neglect in early childhood and ELS

is measured by the damage it leaves, not necessarily the amount of times it had occurred. A child
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could have experienced a neglectful situation only a couple times, but the important part is that

the child experienced this over a long period of time is when it becomes problematic. An

interesting thought is that even though a child does not experience symptoms shortly after the

abuse or even years later, they are still vulnerable to be victims of schizophrenia. From a study

conducted by Cancel et al., in 2015 emotional neglect had a correlation to the decreased grey

matter in people who suffered from schizophrenia. The grey matter was measured by voxel-

based morphometry (VBM). VBM is a common method used to determine gray matter volumes.

VBM cannot measure schizophrenia-like symptoms, for example the positive and negative

symptoms. Looking back on other research, there was little to compare to because there had not

been many studies conducted that closely compared grey matter in schizophrenia patients and

childhood neglect. With that being said, a limitation, mentioned by the authors as well, is that

there are limiting factors of the study and that replication of the study is suggested. An

interesting thing I took from this study is that there is this idea that schizophrenia has an

unknown cause, but there is something that can be taken from it. Those who are genetically

susceptible to stress at a young age could be correlated to those who are suffering from

schizophrenia. Also, this study was more focused on child hood neglect and its correlation to

schizophrenia, rather than just abuse itself because abuse itself might trigger other psychological

deficits. Like many other studies, there is so much that is put into this kind of research and the

amount of control and variables is extremely important when wanting to find accurate and

quality results.

Often times early childhood neglect is not noticed. Parents and caregivers do not realize

that what they are doing is abusive and it is unsettling. There are not many interventions to

interrupt this learned development of being neglected. The most prevalence seen was removing a
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child from the institution as early as possible to repair and mend the brain activity that was lost.

Again, this does not guarantee the child will be at full capacity as if they had not been in an

institution or neglected. Many things are incapable of being undone, which is why early

childhood development is so important. Another preventative factor that could help is educating

women on contraceptives and making sure they understand the responsibilities of having a child

before she makes the mistake of getting pregnant without full support. Sometimes this is not

said, but the parents need to take responsibility for this issue. The parents have full capabilities to

prevent certain stressors in a childs life. In society, it would be important to have consequences

for neglectful acts. A lot of this is focused just on parents, but a thing that has been forgotten is

also making institutions and their employees understand the full complexity of this. To add to

that, if it is necessarily, punishment and consequences should be given to them as well. The child

cannot just turn this off, they are counting on caregivers to guide them and show them the way,

not make it harder for them. Mentioned in Frank et al., 1996, they are starting off with the

question of why this is happening and to whom this is mostly effecting. Families and mothers

who are living in poverty are those who suffer from this the most. The mothers do not have the

funds or adequate resources to provide for their children, which then leads to neglect. To finish

their reasoning, they insist that the policy makers of the states provide assistance to those

actually struggling, without the intense questioning as if they were committed of a crime.

Another thought mentioned by Glaser in 2000 was providing the opportunity for families to get

therapy as a family to build parent-child relations. As for research, the important thing is to

establish a bigger group of test subjects. Also, use other testing methods to further explain

reasoning and validity.

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References

Cancel, A., Comte, M., Truillet, R., Boukezzi, S., Rousseau, P., Zendjidjian, X. Y., & ... Fakra,

E. (2015). Childhood neglect predicts disorganization in schizophrenia through grey

matter decrease in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 132(4),

244-256.

Clark, H. B., Lee, B., Prange, M. E., & McDonald, B. A. (1996). Children lost within the foster

care system: Can wraparound service strategies improve placement outcomes? Journal of

Child and Family Studies, 5(1), 39-54.

Frank, D. A., Klass, P. E., Earls, F., & Eisenberg, L. (1996). Infants and young children in

orphanages: One view from pediatrics and child psychiatry. Pediatrics, 97(4), 569-578.

Glaser, D. (2000). Child abuse and neglect and the braina review. Journal of child psychology

and psychiatry, 41(1), 97-116.

McLeod, S. (2017). Erikson's psychosocial stages of development. Retrieved from

https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html

Nemeroff, C. B. (2016). Paradise lost: the neurobiological and clinical consequences of child

abuse and neglect. Neuron, 89(5), 892-909.

Stamoulis, C., Vanderwert, R. E., Zeanah, C. H., Fox, N. A., & Nelson, C. A. (2015). Early

Psychosocial Neglect Adversely Impacts Developmental Trajectories of Brain

Oscillations and Their Interactions. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(12), 2512-

2528.