Genes pass childhood trauma problems to next generation

♦ Childhood trauma alters genes which can be passed on to future generations, new research has found.

A study of the offspring of children displaced during the Second World War revealed they were up to four times more likely to suffer from serious mental health conditions compared with those whose parents stayed at home.

Researchers examined the health records of 3,000 children of Finnish people who fled to Sweden during the 1941-45 conflict with Soviet Russia. The study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that the children of evacuee girls had an increased risk of being admitted to hospital for depression and bipolar disorder, but this was not replicated among children of evacuee boys. Its authors said this could be partially due to poor parenting by the evacuees, but they believed it was more likely to be caused by epigenetic alterations – changes to the way genes are expressed – which are then inherited.