ABSTRACT
SHAOJIA LU, WEIJIA GAO, ZHAOGUO WEI, WEIWEI WU, MEI LIAO, YUQIANG DING, ZHIJUN ZHANG, AND LINGJIANG LI
7.1 INTRODUCTION
Early life stress, including childhood trauma, which is very common in our society, has been established as a great risk factor in the subsequent development of multiple psychiatric disorders and unfavorable behavior patterns [1]. Previous studies have investigated the possible pathways from early life stress to psychosis, however, to date, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this association [2]. Recently, biological mechanisms such as dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)
axis [3] and altered volumes of specific brain regions [4] after exposures to early life stress have been reported which may help to elucidate the close relationship between early life stress and onset of psychosis.
