
Daughters of WWII refugees are more likely to have mental illness: study - pshaw
https://www.axios.com/daughters-of-wwii-refugees-are-more-likely-to-have-mental-illness-2513872556.html
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Bartweiss
Missing from the headline: this is only daughters _of female refugees_. Sons
of refugees had unchanged mental illness rates, but so did daughters of male
refugees.

That's pretty surprising, and while it doesn't rule out a gender-roles
explanation (maybe male refugees didn't describe their experiences as often?),
it does gesture pointedly at epigenetic causes.

Also notable: the study had a clever control (non-refugee first cousins of
refugee children) which seems to account for both population genetics and
gender distinctions in hospitalization.

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jacquesm
I closely knew a man who was a 'second generation World War II victim'.
Outwardly a normal person but utterly unable to normally function in society.
The government recognized his plight and put him on a lifelong pension which
he used to try to do as much good as he could in the neighborhood where he
lived (and where he was hugely popular).

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reasonattlm
Links between early life adversity and later pace of aging and risk of age-
related disease may be mediated by cytomegalovirus exposure.

[https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2017.01263](https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2017.01263)

"The paper here finds that persistent cytomegalovirus infection is likely the
mediating mechanism linking early life stress and later increased risk of age-
related disease, acting through accelerated immune system dysfunction. This
implies that the early stress may or may not be all that important, as - for
whatever reason - the groups selected as examples of stress in early life are
also more likely to be infected. That might be the short-term detrimental
effects of stress on immune function, or it could be a matter of being in
close contact with more distinct groups of people during childhood, as is the
case for the adopted individuals in the study here. Cytomegalovirus is a
persistent herpesvirus that the immune system cannot effectively clear from
the body. Near everyone becomes infected at some point in life, and extensive
evidence links this infection with immune system dysfunction. Increasing
numbers of immune cells become dedicated to uselessly fighting
cytomegalovirus, and ever fewer are left for everything else the immune system
must accomplish. Other than this long-term corrosion, cytomegalovirus doesn't
cause obvious symptoms in the vast majority of people - few notice the initial
infection."

This is also compatible as a mechanism to explain greater disease risk in
descendants, since growing up in an infected household presumably raises the
risk of early infection with cytomegalovirus.

~~~
goialoq
How does this relate to OP, which found a difference between _genders_ living
in the same places, and which is about mental illness, not age-related
illness?

Edit: Oh, you work at an age-related disease website, so you comment
exclusively through that lens.

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chrismcb
Interesting. But the study only looks at hospitalization. Is it possible that
women are more likely to go to the hospital than men?

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wvh
I reckon men with mental issues tend to end up in jail in many cases.

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jacquesm
Drugs too, homeless as well.

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jcobber
As a person with MDD, I'm glad studies like these are coming out. This is the
best resource material I've seen about MDD and it's helped me a lot
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc)

~~~
dredmorbius
I'll second this video recommendation. Robert Sapolsky is an incredible
researcher and lecturer.

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dev360
This is a crazy coincidence. Me and my sister are trying to get help for my
mom right now for the very same thing, and our grandma was a WWII refugee from
Finland.

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jcrei
Can we use this knowledge to do something about the children and especially
the daughters of the refugees coming out of Syria now?

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alexanderstears
Are there that many women and children coming out of Syria? It seems like most
of the migrants into the E.U are working aged men.

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megaman22
Read _The Last 100 Days_ or listen to Dan Carlin's _Ghosts of the Ostfront_
podcasts to get a sense of how apocalyptic that conflict was. No wonder the
psychic scars persist for generations.

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DoreenMichele
Women tend to also have a lot more social baggage hung on them. It makes me
wonder if the evacuation and trauma made it particularly difficult to figure
out how to fit in socially in a new place.

(I mean as just one element that may have contributed.)

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emsy
>Women tend to have a lot more social baggage

There are studies that show that women internalise emotional traumata much
deeper than men, thus have a higher risk of PTSD (Can't remember if this is
linked to the on-average better memory of women).

As far as I know this is unrelated to the fact that women are more likely to
seek help for mental issues (which would naturally skew the numbers towards
women).

~~~
DoreenMichele
_There are studies that show that women internalise emotional traumata much
deeper than men, thus have a higher risk of PTSD (Can 't remember if this is
linked to the on-average better memory of women)._

This in no way rebuts my thought. What if they are related? What if women
internalize trauma more and suffer PTSD more in part because the entire social
fabric of their life experience is fundamentally different from men?

This has been my experience as a woman. I do something a man would do, it gets
a completely different reaction, and not in a good way. Trying to make my own
life work gets me seemingly perceived as some kind of evil feminist. Men who
try to figure out how to make money are not viewed as some kind of political
activist or troublemaker, threatening the status quo.

I have gotten insane amounts of pushback for what I feel are completely
innocuous behaviors. I have terrible eyesight, so I tend to sit up front in
meetings or classes. This gets interpreted by other people as Type A
personality extremely aggressive, ambitious behavior and prominent people will
publicly comment on what an aberration it is. Their comments clearly come from
a place of judging it to be disruptive, egomaniacal behavior. No one ever
thinks "Well, maybe she can't see the presentation well enough from the back
of the room." It is always framed in terms of me being an uppity woman who
does not know my place in the world.

My "place" clearly being back row seats. Which reminds me of the historical
expectation that blacks in the US had to sit at the back of the bus and stand
up and give their seat to a white person if there weren't enough seats for
everyone.

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emsy
I did not intend to rebut! I saw you downvoted for no given reason (as so
often these days on HN) and wanted to support your comment. People interested
in this topic will have no problem finding the relevant studies, which is why
I didn't even bother to include links.

I just wish people didn't abuse the downvote button so often. Instead of
pushing irrelevant or toxic comments down, it's used to punish differing
opinions. (Sorry for the offtopic rant)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you for the clarification.

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vectorEQ
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics)

if you know that this is heavily triggered by emotional / feels, then you can
see why women might be more suceptible to these things. (as they are generally
raised in a way to be more on the feels side of things, there is actually no
natural difference, only imprinted later in life.)

~~~
Nomentatus
Certainly there was a difference back then in how male and female children
were allowed to deal with emotion. I was viciously beaten as a child in the
early sixties for crying - as were my brothers - to teach me not to. My sister
wasn't until older, if at all. These beatings could go on for very long
periods of time, until breathing became convulsive, and continued after that
point, too. When my younger brother died in his teens, my "training" held and
I wasn't able to cry (but I've got that back in spades, since.) This was only
somewhat extreme for the time. So back then, was there a "feels" (repression)
difference for men and women? Oh, yeah, by no accident.

However, I believe the evidence shows this actually leaves males more
vulnerable to trauma and PTSD, not less. I don't have links for that, just
memory of the science, but what you deal with during the day is perhaps less
likely to keep you up at night.

