Can breakups cause severe trauma? – Firstpost

What should I study? What do I want to be? How do I finance my education? Who do I want to spend the rest of my life with? These are life-changing decisions that many young people face.

Adolescence (between 18 and 25 years of age) is a critical period in the life course, especially for identity development. Adolescents are neither dependent adolescents nor independent adults. It is a time of discovery and frequent change.

And all of this happens while their brains are still developing, particularly in areas associated with higher cognitive and emotional functions. These functions help individuals plan, monitor, and successfully achieve their goals.

In the midst of all these important life decisions, the end of a romantic relationship can be devastating. After a breakup, academic performance may decline, thoughts of the ex-partner may be intrusive, grief may be great, and a suicide attempt may even occur.

Nevertheless, separations among adolescents are often dismissed or trivialized as a rite of passage. A traumatic reaction is dismissed as exaggerated or exaggerated.

In addition, separations are not considered potentially traumatic events in the psychiatric literature.

As a mental health researcher with experience studying romantic attachment and trauma, I co-authored a paper that examined the end of romantic relationships as potentially traumatic events among university students. The aim of the research was to determine whether their experiences matched the official psychiatric diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Recognizing potential trauma following a breakup could help young adults receive appropriate treatment and support.

Traumatic separations

In several studies, we tested the assumption that separation can be considered a potentially traumatic event based on the definition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition (DSM-5). Mental health providers use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a guide to diagnose patients with, for example, posttraumatic stress disorder.

The diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder is based on several criteria, including Criterion A: actual or threatened experience of death, serious injury, or sexual violence. Criterion A acts as the “gatekeeper” for this diagnosis.

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Based on their self-reported responses to the Posttraumatic Stress Checklist for DSM-5, our participants were divided into three groups:

Group one (separation group): 886 participants who reported posttraumatic stress symptoms due to their most traumatic separation.

Group two (trauma group): 592 participants who reported posttraumatic stress symptoms due to a traumatic event defined in the DSM-5 (e.g. physical or sexual abuse).

Group three (control group): 544 participants who reported posttraumatic stress symptoms due to their most stressful experience (for example, moving house or parental divorce).

We found that participants in separation group one reported significantly more posttraumatic stress symptoms such as flashbacks, recurring memories, and nightmares about their former partner than the other two groups.

The brain

After the questionnaire, a subset of students from each of the three groups underwent a brain scan so that we could see which areas of the brain were activated in response to certain stimuli.

During the scans, they rated the images as positive, negative or neutral.

• 36 participants from group one (breakup group) rated photos of their ex-partners

• 15 participants from Group Two (trauma group), who reported physical or sexual assault as their most traumatic event, rated photos of physical or sexual assault

• Twenty-eight participants from Group Three (control group) rated generally negative pictures (such as children playing in polluted water). These photos were part of the International Affective Picture System, which is widely used in studies of human emotions.

We analyzed brain activation (increased blood flow) of the amygdala and hippocampus in the temporal lobe. These brain regions are associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and are part of the fear-based limbic system, which is part of our “fight or flight” system. They are also associated with rejection of real and imagined romantic attachments.

We found that activation levels in the amygdala and hippocampus were comparable when participants in the separation group rated pictures of their ex-partners and when participants in the trauma group rated pictures of physical and sexual assault.

Other factors at play

Third, we focused only on participants who had broken up. We found that their emotional response to the breakup was influenced by the following:

• demographic characteristics such as gender, sexual orientation and religion. In particular, participants with a sexual minority orientation and who reported being non-religious reported higher levels of separation distress.

• Characteristics of the separation, such as the perceived closeness of the relationship and the reasons for the separation.

Go on

The combined results support our hypothesis that separation from a relationship can be a potentially traumatic event for adolescents and can be perceived as life-threatening.

Recognizing the potentially traumatic experience of separation can mitigate its negative impact, encourage adolescents to seek help, and promote mental health.

Mental health providers and student counseling centers should recognize the potential intensity of separations and consider screening for posttraumatic stress symptoms following separation.

Trauma-focused treatment, such as prolonged exposure therapy, can help students, especially those who cannot avoid separation-related cues, such as seeing their former partner in class or on social media.

Because relationship breakups are not considered traumatic events in the psychiatric literature, our results are controversial and we do not claim that all breakups are necessarily traumatic.

More research needs to be done, especially with a more diverse group of students and a larger sample size for the brain scans.

• I thank Prof. S. Seedat, Prof. E. Lesch, Dr. A. Roos, Prof. Kidd and Prof. S. du Plessis for their contributions to my research.

Alberta SJ van der Watt , researcher, Stellenbosch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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