Mental Health
Mental health
Stressful or traumatic events can increase the risk of developing a range of mental health problems. However, the underlying mechanisms of this causal link are not well understood.
Experiencing traumatic events can greatly increase someone’s chance of developing a mental health problem, including depression, anxiety, psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the reasons for this are not well understood.
Cortisol, a key hormone involved in stress response, has been shown to differ in people with mental health problems compared to people without. As such, it is possible that the way the body responds to stressful events could be one reason explaining the link between trauma and mental health.
To investigate the role of cortisol in the relationship between trauma and poor mental health, Dr Hannah Jones and her team from the University of Bristol will use data collected from a study of children over their lifetime. They will collect hair cortisol data to provide a good measure of long-term stress, use a large dataset to make sure results are reliable, and explore whether long-term cortisol levels lead to mental health problems or vice versa.
Results from this project will allow the team to better understand if abnormal cortisol levels, caused by early-life stress, results in poor mental health. A better understanding of this is needed for the development of new treatments aimed at stress response in individuals with trauma-related mental health problems.