A new study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology finds that poor perceived family finances (PFF) and family-based adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are each associated with symptoms of depression and behavioral problems in adolescents from Norway.
The research, led by Sondre Aasen Nilsen of the Regional Centre for Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare, also reveals that adolescents from low-income families are significantly more likely to report family-based Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) than their peers. The authors write:
“Exposure to family-based ACEs was strongly socially patterned, with those reporting poor PFF showing higher exposure to all family-based ACEs than their peers. Family-based ACEs attenuated some of the association between poor PFF and both depressive and behavioral problems, suggesting that they could be part of the pathway through which poverty influences mental health problems. However, PFF and both cumulative and classes of ACEs were mostly independently associated with mental health problems and generally did not interact.”
These findings echo a growing body of research connecting adverse childhood experiences and economic hardship to depression and mental distress, adding weight to critiques of the biomedical model, which has failed to identify consistent biomarkers. More and more, researchers are turning toward social and environmental explanations for psychological suffering, including poverty, trauma, and family dysfunction.
You've landed on a MIA journalism article that is funded by MIA supporters. To read the full article, sign up as a MIA Supporter. All active donors get full access to all MIA content, and free passes to all Mad in America events.
Current MIA supporters can log in below.(If you can't afford to support MIA in this way, email us at [email protected] and we will provide you with access to all donor-supported content.)
This study offers yet more evidence that what we call “mental illness” is often the biological consequence of living in environments that fail to meet our core neurophysiological needs. Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) gives us a scientifically grounded framework for understanding that virtually all mental health conditions are symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system, not disordered minds or broken brains.
Psychology and psychiatry, as practiced today, largely remain pseudosciences built on theories that ignore the foundational biology of connection and regulation. Instead of recognizing our nervous system’s need for safety, attunement, and belonging, these fields often individualize distress and offer labels and medications rather than actual support. This approach misses the point entirely: nervous systems become dysregulated when we are chronically unsafe, unseen, or disconnected.
The mainstream culture itself promotes separation: from ourselves, from each other, and from the rhythms of life that support regulation. Then it turns around and blames us for our pain, as if our distress is a personal failing rather than a normal biological response to chronic adversity.
Studies like this confirm what IPNB has long emphasized: when children grow up in poverty, with chronic stress and little relational safety, their nervous systems adapt in ways that reflect those conditions. These adaptations are then pathologized instead of understood. What we need is not more diagnostic categories, but a cultural shift that puts regulation, safety, and connection at the center of how we support each other.
#TraumaAwareAmerica
Report comment