Release date: Oct. 30, 2002
Contact: Nancy Seideman, Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0640 or nseidem@emory.edu

Researchers Find Connections Between Adolescent Stress Hormones and Increased Risk for Mental Illness in Adulthood

An Emory University study on the development of psychological disorders in adolescents has found that those who carry the highest levels of the stress hormone cortisol appear to be more at risk to develop serious mental illnesses in adulthood.

The research, led by Emory psychology professor Elaine Walker, studied the stress hormone levels and cognitive and physical development of more than 90 adolescents from 1995 until last year. Walker recently began a second study, expected to last five years, that will take a deeper look at the interaction of both stress and sex hormones to further determine what influence they have on mental health and neurocognitive development.

"In general, the risk for mental illness goes up dramatically during adolescence," says Walker, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. "We wanted to better understand why, for most adolescents, their psychological and behavioral problems are transitional and go away in adulthood, while for some, adolescence is simply the entry point for a long, downward spiral in to serious psychiatric problems such as clinical depression, psychosis and schizophrenia."

What Walker and her research group found was a direct correlation between abnormally high levels of cortisol and adolescents who later met the criteria for serious mental disorders. Although part of the normal developmental process involves changes in brain regions that govern the release of stress hormones, one theory is that the genes that make a person vulnerable to mental illness can get "switched" on during adolescence due to high levels of hormonal activity, Walker says.

While the results of her first study have many implications for treatment, Walker says more research is needed to develop viable therapies to prevent the development of serious mental disorders that begin in adolescence.

Scientists and parents have long known adolescence to be a period fraught with change, crossing all levels of physical, mental and hormonal development, but within the last 10 years researchers also have found that the biochemistry and structure of the brain go through changes more dramatic than originally thought, Walker explains.

"The brain of a 14-year-old is literally quite different than that of a 25-year-old," she says. "Such discoveries are leading people to think more carefully about adolescent psychology as we continue to learn more about the precursors of mental illnesses that tend to fully manifest in early adulthood."

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