Every element of people’s lives has been impacted by the terrible COVID-19 pandemic, including their health, employment, and way of life.
Another alarming conclusion from a new study has been added to the list of detrimental effects brought on by the deadly coronavirus.
COVID-19 Lockdowns Caused US Teens’ Brains to Age
According to the study, which was released on Thursday in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, teenagers’ brains aged three years earlier as a result of the stress and anxiety brought on by pandemic lockdowns. These outcomes are comparable to those reported in kids who have experienced persistent stress and trauma.
Traumatic childhood experiences can make people more prone to mental illnesses including depression, anxiety, and addiction as well as raise their risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other long-term harmful impacts.
These facts make it clear that the early aging of children’s brains is a bad development.
The researchers reported that we observed that youth tested after the pandemic shutdowns had more severe internalizing mental health problems, lower cortical thickness, greater hippocampus and amygdala sizes, and more advanced brain age.
Ian Gotlib, the study’s lead author, told CNN that the research team had anticipated finding issues with internalized difficulties, sadness, and anxiety. However, they weren’t precisely sure what the MRI scans would reveal.
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Mental Health Affects Ageing of the Brain
As we become older, our brains naturally change in structure. The latest research suggests that the pandemic may have had much more detrimental consequences on adolescents’ neurological and mental health.
Up until now, only children who had endured long-term hardship whether as a result of abuse, neglect, violence, familial dysfunction or a mix of several factors showed these kinds of accelerated changes in their brain ages.
The Stanford team’s observations of changes in brain structure may or may not be related to alterations in mental health, Gotlib said, even though similar events are associated with poor mental health outcomes later in life.
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