There is much news in the last week about the forced separation from their parents of minor immigrant chlldren at the US border. Reports of deplorable living conditions have dominated the major news networks. No one appears sure even how many children are separated though estimates run into the multiple thousands. What are the effects of such forced separations on the psychological state of children?
There appears overwhelmning scientific evidence that separation of children from their parents, except in cases of clear maltreatment, is harmful to the development of the children, their children, and communities. I have drawn some of the scientific findings from an article in the Society for Research in Child Development by J. Bouza, Daisy Camacho-Thompson, and others titled “The Science is Clear: Separating Families has long-term damaging psychological and health consequences for children, families, and communities”.
Actually, much of the research began during World War II when the effects of parental separation were studied in multiple settings both in the US and abroad. Findings noted included increased risk for mental health problems, poor social functioning, less secure attachment, problems with the stress reactivity systems, and health problems. Those findings remain consistent with more recent research findings which report increased mental health risks for both children and parents when they are separated in the immigration process. Parent child separation has negative effects at all ages, including adolescence.
Why is this so? What is going on? There are several explanations including the notion of parents as stress buffers, disruptions of brain functioning secondary to the stress of separation, and negative impacts on attachment processes, to name several of the key factors. Immigration is in itself a stressful process including dislocation, relocation, hazards of travel, fatigue, etc. Children depend on their parents to navigate these stressful and traumatic events and the presence of parents is very helpful to the child’s coping with the stresses of immigration. When the children do not have access to their caregiver, their physical responses to stressors are impacted negatively. Mental health professionals have noted that children internalize traumatic and negative experiences. Often, they don’t have the language skills to express what they are feeling and they show more somatic symptoms such as loss of appetite, stomach aches, sleep disturbances, and headaches. These problems can become chronic if untreated.
Prolonged activation of the stress response system has been associated with lasting changes in key areas of the brain with increased cortisol and norepinephrine responses to later stressors in life. In short, the child can become overreactive to stressors as a way of coping in life. These changes disrupt higher order cognitive and affective processes in the brain. The results include greater risk for medical and psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, lowered school functioning, obesity, immune system dysfunction, lessened physical growth, heart and lung disease, and stroke. All these risks have been shown to occur in children separated from their parents, including border family separations harming US citizens whose family members suffer such experiences.
Perhaps one of the most worrisome effects of such separations is on the attachment process for children. There have been psychological studies in which children who experience separations develop insecure and disorganized attachment and have persisting levels of stress. Children begin to worry that their parents are gone and not available. Their stable sense of safety and security is disrupted. Psychotherapist Silvia Dutchevici, a member of Physicians for Human Rights, has contended that separated and displaced children learn that the world is unsafe, people can’t be trusted, and that attachment and love cause pain. The child’s sense of safety, stability, and security all are broken at the time of the forced separation from the parent. Even the reuniting of the child with the parent has understandable negative effects. The child subsequently will wonder when or if they will be separated again from their loved ones. Their ability to attach, love, and bond are interrupted.
What are the implications for society? I think it is clear that the effects of forced separation of children from parents during the immigration process brings negative effects outlined above. What this early childhood trauma does is likely place a heavy burden on society as well. Do we really want to create a generation of traumatized children who grow up to be adults who distrust authority and lack their sense of safety and stability in the world? I think not. Such forces also can lead the young people to greater dependence on societal systems such as child welfare, juvenile and criminal justice, poorer school performance, lowered work performance as adults, and increased physical and mental health negative outcomes. We can and must do better than this. These issues affect us all.
For more information on stress processes and management, please see our book (I Can’t Take It Anymore: How to Manage Stress so It Doesn’t Manage You; Paul G. Longobardi, Ph.D., and Janice B. Longobardi, R.N., B.S.N., P.H.N.), available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542458056. For more information about the authors, book, and stress, please see our website at www.manageyourhealthandstress.com.
Good luck in your journey.
Dr. Paul Longobardi
For information on these and related topics, please see my website at www.successandmindset.com