A recent study published in Child Abuse & Neglect sheds new light on the connection between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the global mental health crisis among adolescents.
Led by Abigail Casas Muñoz of the National Pediatrics Institute in Mexico City, the research highlights how ACEs—traumatic experiences rooted in social and systemic issues—are linked to a wide range of mental health symptoms. While the study focuses on Mexican adolescents, its findings resonate globally, raising critical questions about the dominant biomedical narrative surrounding teen mental health.
The authors write:
“Overall, this study highlights the significant impact of ACEs on the mental well-being of adolescents, regardless of their indigenous or non-indigenous background.”
Yet, they also emphasize that current measurement tools fail to fully capture the lived realities of marginalized groups, particularly indigenous populations. This gap underscores the importance of moving beyond narrow diagnostic frameworks to address the social and structural factors driving these crises.
These findings call into question the medicalization of what is fundamentally a social issue. Rather than framing rising rates of anxiety or depression among teens as a “mental illness epidemic,” the study suggests that these symptoms may be better understood as responses to systemic inequities and unmet basic needs.
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Listen MIA: what in the following is untrue? There is not just research, but almost infinite testimony proving beyond doubt the link between trauma and the traumatic expression you call mental illness, which are really the psychological, emotional and physiological injuries that took place obviously within the social context including family, while conversely there is no compelling evidence of any kind of neurological or biological explanation for mental health, so proving the link between trauma and the consequences with evidence is hardly the problem is it, or the fleshing out of this evidence with rational or contextualizing arguments, an approach which reflects YOUR denial of reality, a reality which you deny because you haven’t carefully uncovered and exposed it to yourself. This reality includes the reality that THEY, i.e. psychiatry and mental health systems and governments at large, deny reality, and so does most of society at large. Why is this? Unless you understand this problem, to what are you to direct your efforts? To the worst denier of the problem, proving that your efforts are directed by your socially conditioned assumptions which have become your wishful thinking. If you as critics of the system can’t grasp this stinging nettle, who can????
You haven’t uncovered the reason why nobody is taking any interest in the data and obvious experience of social life, least within government or the industry which profits out of the false social consensus and which provides the only ‘solution’, no matter how false, that government, society and business have for this exploding phenomena of social distress which could obviously only be solved by the total destruction of this system if you actually tare of your blinders and recognize it’s one total process, and you can’t get a good part in a social process productive of nothing but ubiquitous disorder, horror, and destruction. The problem you criticize, which is the ignorance and delusions of psychiatry, the mental health professional and consequently society at large, this problem of a dangerously out of control psychiatry and psychopharmacology is mere epiphenomena within the context of a dangerously out of control and destructive society run by vampire egoists and frightened people who either don’t want to or can’t do anything about it. And the basis of this pathological social activity is the underlying crisis in consciousness effecting us all. Can you see that? Perhaps not. But uncover the whole picture I say, because then you dissolve all reason for despair, which is an indication of flogging dead horses including yourselves.
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It’s a tamas culture for you, America as a whole, but it’s the demons among you who have the rajas, and they are in control. Let’s hope the snails can catch the crows this time. It’s not a caveman or a crayon injury. Black oil. Nature is sattva, so she could save you, but where is she now? Those who turn from you now fear you Mother.
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Richard,
Mexico has high rates of MTHFR homozygous C677T mutations. 39% in the states of Oaxaca and Queretaro, which is the highest in the world. Since the C677T mutation lowers folate and Vit D and is enriched at epigenetic sites, it makes sense that ACE’s have an impact.
Studies have shown that for individuals carrying the TT genotype, childhood maltreatment resulted in increased levels of depressive symptoms
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3731792/#:~:text=Moreover%2C%20there%20was%20a%20significant,depressive%20symptoms%20(Figure%202).
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