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October 1, 2007Early Family Intervention Alters Preschoolers' Biological Response to Stress |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Now a new study shows that a non-medical early family intervention that improves caregiving also results in important changes in children's biological response to stress. Delinquent adolescents and highly aggressive children have been shown to have abnormal stress responses, especially in social situations. They appear to be less tuned in to social cues and they are not as sensitive to positive reinforcement as normally developing children, explains Laurie Miller Brotman, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and the Corzine Family Associate Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine. A family intervention that results in an adaptive stress response in young high-risk children may prevent delinquency and psychiatric illness later in life. "Our findings demonstrate the powerful influence of the caregiving environment on children's biology," says Dr. Brotman. We have shown that parents of delinquent youth can improve their parenting and these changes result in lower rates of problems in their young children. "The long-term consequences of the change in the cortisol response among the at-risk children in the study isn't known, but the results provide further evidence that early, intervention can have a profound effect on children," says Dr. Brotman. Dr. Brotman and her colleagues evaluated whether a program designed to prevent antisocial behavior in high risk preschoolers could alter the children's biological response to a stressful social situation. Participating families had a preschooler and an adolescent who was adjudicated for a delinquent act in family court in New York City between 1997 and 2002. Preschoolers learned to socialize with peers, to identify feelings and to follow rules.
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