Halloween Special: Are You Scared?
by Leah
October is my favorite month, and do you know why? SCARY MOVIES!!! How many of you are scared of horror movies? I personally am not, and there is nothing I like more than Halloween scary movie marathons on TV. But, I did not see my first scary movie until I was in high school.
Researchers from the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center studied how a mother’s violent past will effect her relationship with her children, and what effects it has directly to her children. Dr. Daniel S. Schechter was the study’s principal investigator. The study included 41 inner-city mothers of very young children, ages 8-50 months, from New York City with a history of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The mothers included both untreated and treated PTSD that was related specifically to violent experiences such as physical and sexual abuse, assault, and family violence before the age sixteen.
Schechter focused on studying what impact the mother’s PTSD has on the development of their child’s emotional regulation and social cognition during their first four years of life. They were looking for ways to develop treatments that could stop the violence in families due to the parents’ violent past. Schechter was looking for connections between the mother’s PTSD and their response to their child, specifically when their child was in distress.
During the experiments, Schechter measured the salivary cortisol levels before and 30 minutes after a videotaped play that showed their children. Twice during the movie, the child was brought in to the mother and then taken away. They also measured the cortisol levels 30 minutes after the mothers were separated from their children. Cortisol is a hormone involved in stress.
The results showed no definite conclusion. The baseline salivary cortisol values were not linked with their childhood violent traumas. The cortisol levels were also not linked to their current psychiatric symptoms, including their current PTS symptoms. None of the variables in the study showed significant association with pre-stress or post-stress salivary cortisol levels.
Schechter concluded that cortisol reactivity was not correlated with violent trauma during their analysis. Schechter still believes that violent, trauma-associated emotional problems may increase the risk for transmission of emotional instability from parenting behavior to young children.
Another part of the study included how the mothers react to their children’s exposure to violence, and the effects of violence in the media on children. Schechter found that these women with PTSD watched more violent movie, and more television, as children than mothers without PTSD. Schechter also found that mothers who tried to avoid reminders of their violent past were more drawn to violent media. Schechter believes that, “…mothers with violence-related PTSD, who wish to shield themselves and their children from violence, inadvertently expose themselves and their children to violence…perhaps as a way of feeling a sense of control in the present over very frightening memories….”
By trying to sensor what they are exposed to through being able to choose what they watch, the mothers get a false sense of control, and end up exposing their children to violence and horror. Media rated appropriate for children often is not.
They concluded that children under the age of five, though they are not able to understand scary movies, are psychologically affected by the scenes they are exposed to. Children are not able to distinguish reality from fantasy, and this can cause long-term behavioral effects.
They also found in the study that watching any television is problematic. Schechter advises that children should not watch more than two hours of television for school age children, and no more than 30 minutes for children under the age of six. Children can not comprehend that what they see is not real.
Effects on children exposed to violence are limitless; violence, anxiety, night-terrors, sleep disorders, and self-endangering behaviors are just some. Scary movies have that title for a reason, they are scary. Expecting a child to watch a horror film and not be scared is unreasonable. Children under the age of 13, I believe, are not able to understand that movies are made up and are not real.
Would you show your little brother or sister a scary movie? Should gender be a factor in this research? Should mothers without PTSD and mothers with PTSD brought about from causes other than the once listed be added to this study? Why do you think all the results were inconclusive?
