Czech researchers find childhood stress results in more accidents and illness

The first results are starting to be released from an exhaustive 20 year study of thousands of Czech children. One of the main findings is that stress related incidents in childhood can mark you for the rest of your life. We report on the findings and what the research team hopes to do with them.

Twenty-years ago around 5,000 families, soon-to-be parents in the Czech Republic’s second city Brno, and around 1,500 from the south Moravian town of Znojmo started what would be a 20 year research project. The like had never been seen in the country before.

For the next two decades the newly-born children in a newly-reborn country would be tested and questioned about the major events in their lives, their health and psychological outlook. The aim of the ambitious research project was to ascertain to what extent their early years would pave the way for the rest of their lives.

With the survey subjects now at the end of their teens, the massive amount of data has started to be sifted by the team from Brno’s Masaryk University. And they seem to confirm the theories that once a dark cloud appears over your head in childhood it can follow you around for the rest of your life.

Lubomír Kukla

Lubomír Kukla is an associate professor at the medical faculty and one of the leaders of the research, part of which charted so-called stressogenic events such as deaths in the family or bullying.

“We know that these stressogenic events have an influence on many, many aspects of life of the family and children. For instance, these life events influence diseases, accidents, problems with lifetime activities and so on and so on.”

In fact, the research found that children subject to a lot of such stress events are up to twice as likely to suffer from accidents as those who did not and up to three times as likely to suffer from serious illness. They are also generally more impulsive, hyperactive and have lower levels of self-control. In short, their behaviour patterns make them more prone to accidents.

The Czech Republic was not the only country which signed up for this long term research. Altogether 12 countries were there at the start but only five at the finish: the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, Britain and the semi-autonomous Isle of Man.

Mr. Kukla says a comparison of the research shows the Czech Republic is mid-way in the European accident league with half as many accidents per head as Ukraine but twice as many as Britain. He hopes the results can serve as a wake up call for politicians.

“Our idea is that we should use our data to promote accident prevention and to change the ideas of our politicians. We want to say that this is a major problem and the problem of accidents and stress should be seriously looked into and considered. We want to get them on board to help the situation in this country.”

The conclusion appears to be that more serious steps to prevent accidents and illness are a better investment than treatment once they have happened.