“As COVID unfolded, I became interested in thinking about the pandemic, adding the lockdown and transmission of COVID-19, as a traumatic stressor rather than just a complicated event. [I tried to think] our reactions to this in a more mental, trauma-informed way,” Melissa Hagan, an associate professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, said first. also assistant professor.
Hagan and colleagues surveyed 111 mothers of young children (about age 7) who were already enrolled in an ongoing UCSF for several years. Along with knowledge gathered in the years leading up to the pandemic, the researchers provided mothers with a questionnaire about their own intellectual fitness and that of their young, as well as the quality and nature of their interactions at the onset of the pandemic (May-November 2020).
“When we communicate about traumatic reactions, we don’t just communicate about sadness or frustration. We communicate about the highest levels of anxiety or worry and hypervigilance,” Hagan said. “There are all those things that were part of the pandemic experience where they were very applicable to thinking through a trauma lens. “
The study found that while the pandemic affected mothers’ brainpower, mother-child dating seemed to deepen early in the pandemic, even as negative COVID-related events increased. Hagan explained that the children in this study were more affected by their mother’s reaction to pandemic events than the events themselves. In addition, the researchers found that the adversity of mothers’ formative years was directly related to their children’s intellectual ability during the pandemic. The effects may not be fully explained through the scope of this study, Hagan explained. .
“It’s vital to mothers’ stories and types of adversity because we know that the parenting story of fathers or adversity outside the home influences how they raise the next generation. “
This study cohort included predominantly black, Latino/Hispanic and multiracial mothers. On average, those mothers reported negative experiences from 3 years of training, with maximum emotional abuse, divorce or separation from parents from the caregiver, or significant financial hardship.
During the pandemic, most mothers reported experiencing changes in their finances and employment. Nearly 75% of mothers reported having difficulty fulfilling fundamental desires because they or their spouses had reduced their working hours or lost their job.
“A large number of large-scale ongoing studies and research on the effects of COVID-19 on other people’s teams find that COVID is disproportionately affecting communities of color,” Hagan said. communities. “
Hagan hopes doctors will consider the mental health history of the pandemic and how it has not only caused increased stress, but also had a toxic or traumatic effect on mothers.
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