Early-life stress sensitizes individuals to subsequent stressors to increase lifetime risk for psychiatric disorders. Within the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a mesolimbic brain region implicated in stress response and mental health, early-life stress causes long-lasting changes in gene expression and chromatin modifications that in turn cause latent physiological and behavioral sensitivity to stress.

We should NOT ask why adults are aggressive or depressed, use drugs or constantly unhealthy, failed in school as children and react disorderly, we should find out if they repeating the pattern of their early childhood or react according to their early imprint. Many of these later reactions are explained in this article: “The Biological Effects of Childhood Trauma”

My answer to: “The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress”. In 1994, after writing my manuscript about my abused childhood, I asked: Does childhood abuse have long-term effects? Every psychologist I spoke to said: “Children grow out of it.” I knew they were wrong. My trauma never left—it lived in my body and mind, ruining concentration, fueling anxiety, and shaping every day of my life.