Editor’s Note: Alberta SJ van der Watt is a researcher at Stellenbosch University. Her area of interest is in post-traumatic stress symptoms and interpersonal relationships, but she has also conducted research on mood and anxiety disorders.
What should I study? What career to pursue? How will I pay for my studies? Who do I want to spend the rest of my life with? These are questions that torment the lives of many young people.
A young man’s adulthood (between 18 and 25 years of age) is a critical stage in the life course, especially for identity development. Young adults are neither dependent teenagers nor independent adults. It is a period of exploration and frequent change.
And all of this is happening while their brains are still developing, especially in areas associated with higher cognitive and emotional functioning. This functioning helps the individual to plan, monitor and execute their goals successfully.
In the midst of all these important life choices, the breakup of a romantic relationship can be devastating. After a breakup, people may present worse academic achievement, intrusive thoughts about the ex-partner and intense mourningand they can even try suicide.
However, breakups between young adults are often discarded or trivialized as a rite of passage. A traumatic response is considered exaggerated.
Furthermore, psychiatric literature does not view breakups as potentially traumatic events.
As a mental health researcher with expertise in romantic attachment and trauma research, I co-authored an article explore Romantic relationship breakdowns as potentially traumatic events among college students. The aim of the research was to investigate whether their experiences fit the official psychiatric diagnosis of post-traumatic stress.
Identifying potential trauma after a breakup can help young adults get appropriate treatment and support.
When the romantic attachment figure is no longer present
In several studies, we have tested the idea that breakups can be considered a potentially traumatic event based on the definition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition (DSM-5). Mental health professionals use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a guide to diagnose patients with, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder.
The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is based on several criteria, including Criterion A: exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. Criterion A acts as the “gatekeeper” for this diagnosis.
Asking the questions
Based on your self-reported responses in the Post-traumatic Stress Checklist for DSM-5our participants were divided into three groups:
Group one (separation group): 886 participants who endorsed post-traumatic stress symptoms based on their most traumatic breakup.
Group two (trauma group): 592 participants who endorsed post-traumatic stress symptoms based on a DSM-5-defined traumatic event (e.g., physical and sexual assault).
Group three (control group): 544 participants who presented with post-traumatic stress symptoms based on their most stressful experience (e.g., moving house or parental divorce).
We found that participants in Group One, separation, reported significantly more post-traumatic stress symptomssuch as flashbacks, recurring memories, and nightmares about their ex-partner, than the other two groups.
Observing the brain
After the questionnaire, a subset of students from each of the three groups performed brain scans so we could see which areas of the brain were activated in response to specific stimuli.
During the scans, they classified the images as positive, negative or neutral.
- 36 participants from Group One (breakup group) rated photos of their ex-partners;
- 15 participants in Group Two (trauma group), who specifically indicated physical or sexual assault as their most traumatic event, rated photos of physical or sexual assault;
- 28 participants in Group Three (control group) rated general negative images (such as children playing in polluted water). These photographs were part of the International Affective Picture systemwidely used in studies of human emotion.
We analyzed brain activation (increased blood flow) amygdala It’s from hippocampus within the temporal lobe. These regions of the brain are associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and are part of the [sistema límbico] based on fear (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541120/), which is part of our “fight or flight” system. They have also been linked to rejection of real and imagined romantic attachment (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33392890/).
We found similar activation levels in the amygdala and hippocampus when participants in the breakup group evaluated images of their ex-partners and when participants in the trauma group evaluated images of physical and sexual assault.
Sex, religion and other factors
Third, we focused only on participants in the separation group. We found that their emotional response to the breakup was influenced by:
- Demographic characteristics, such as gender, sexual orientation and religion. Specifically, participants with a minority sexual orientation and who reported being non-religious reported higher levels of separation distress.
- Characteristics of the breakup, such as the perception of the closeness of the relationship and the reasons for the breakup.
Moving on
The combined results support our hypothesis that romantic breakups can be potentially traumatic events for young adults and can be experienced as life-threatening.
Validating breakup experiences as potentially traumatic can buffer their negative impacts, encourage young adults to seek help, and promote mental health.
Providers of mental health services and student counseling services should recognize the possible intensity of breakups and consider screening for post-traumatic stress symptoms after a breakup.
Trauma-focused treatment, such as prolonged exposure therapycan help students, especially those who cannot avoid breakup-related cues, such as seeing their ex-partners in class or on social media.
Because breakups are not considered traumatic events in the psychiatric literature, our findings are controversial and we do not claim that all breakups are necessarily traumatic.
More research needs to be done, especially with a more diverse set of students and a larger sample size for brain scans.
I acknowledge the contributions of Prof. S Seedat, Prof. And Lesch, Dr. A Roos, Prof. Kidd and Prof. S du Plessis for my research.
This article was republished from The Conversation. Read the original article.
Source: CNN Brasil
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