Aditi Singh
Although global democracies have consistently pledged themselves critical components of the fight against poverty, in many of these nations, poverty rates have stagnated. While the correlation between mental illness and those living under the poverty line is well-recognized, it is poorly understood, yielding persistent generational cycles of poverty that our governments lack the understanding to resolve. As a society, if we choose to recognize and characterize the impact of living under the poverty line on peoples’ brains and psychology, it will bring us one step closer to creating meaningful systemic change for those who need it the most.
Across the world, living under the poverty line has been consistently linked to increased risk of psychological disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and general anxiety disorder. While it is intuitively true that it is incredibly difficult for those with psychosis and hallucination-related disease to maintain consistent jobs, apply for social security benefits, and even attend university full-time, resulting in reduced income, psychologists eventually began asking the opposite question—what if poverty somehow propagatesmental illness? Studies have shown that diseases like schizophrenia often operate epigenetically (Wawrzczak-Bargieła et al., 2023). Fundamentally, some people are born with predispositions to certain mental illnesses, but those genes are only “turned on” when activated by environmental risk factors, such as trauma, in childhood and adolescence. When most people hear the words “childhood trauma”, their immediate association is abuse and neglect regardless of wealth, but poverty can also be a uniquely traumatizing experience asit increases the risk of both. Children under the poverty line are far more likely to witness violence in their communities, and as parental figures fall into substance abuse or continuously take on more shifts to keep their house together, they experience their own level of trauma. If both poverty and mental illness feed into one another, this relationship is possibly an additional contributor to the cyclical nature of poverty as well— if an individual begins in poverty and has a child who develops mental illness as a result of the trauma they experience, it’s unlikely that the child can escape their circumstances in the future, falling into the cycle of poverty themselves.
Aside from psychological implications, poverty directly changes brain structures. As the combination of high stress, reduced access to education, and often insufficient nutrition continue to impact developing children’s lives, it should be no surprise that their body directly manifests the toll. In a randomized experiment entitled Baby’s First Years, Dr. Kimberly Noble at Columbia University explored whether the correlation between poverty and reduced hippocampus size, lowered impulse control and altered brain pathways was, in fact, a causal relationship (Noble et al., 2022). She found that during early developmental “sensitive” periods, the brain is sculpted through processes such as the formation of new brain cells, synaptic pruning, and the development of new connections between cells. This development is specifically intended to prepare the child for the future, but when poverty’s epigenetic mechanisms impact everything from the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis to the nature of the sleep-wake cycle, necessary opportunities for development are fundamentally impeded.
Environmentally, exposure to toxins also harms brain development. Low-income individuals, particularly refugees that have the hardest time finding access to government-subsidized housing, are likely to inhabit substandard locations with toxins such as lead and mold exposure. A study published by the NIH found that between 2009 and 2016, over 27% of young resettled children in Ohio had blood lead levels above the healthy level. Comparatively, more than 75.5% of Afghani children of the same age had elevated blood lead levels (Shakya & Bhatta, 2019). At high levels of exposure to lead, the brain and central nervous system become severely impaired, resulting in coma, convulsions, permanent intellectual disabilities, behavioral disorders, and even death (World Health Organization, 2023). Considering that it largely affects the parts of the brain dealing with intelligence, reaction time, and attention, even if the damage is not immediately apparent, it can definitely still appear in the long term (Chiodo et al., 2004). This creates yet another mechanism for poverty to become cyclical.
While the social safety nets of today seek to address almost exclusively immediate needs, perhaps a broader understanding of the psychological and biological reasons that cycles of poverty are difficult to break will enable policymakers to generate targeted, sustainably effective policies. Our society has failed the marginalized for far too long, but this unexpected step— towards the role of neuroscience in public policy— is part of our solution.
References
Chiodo, L. M., Jacobson, S. W., & Jacobson, J. L. (2004, March 16). Neurodevelopmental effects of postnatal lead exposure at very low levels. Neurotoxicology and Teratology. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0892036204000212
MP;, S. S. (n.d.). Elevated blood lead levels among resettled refugee children in Ohio, 2009-2016. American journal of public health. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30998405/
Noble, K. G., & Troller-Renfree, S. V. (n.d.). The impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activity | proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115649119
Wawrzczak-Bargieła, A., Bilecki, W., & Maćkowiak, M. (2023, March 1). Epigenetic targets in schizophrenia development and therapy. Brain sciences. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10046502/#:~:text=It%20is%20suggested%20that%20environmental,for%20schizophrenia%20development%20[60].
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Lead poisoning. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health#:~:text=At%20high%20levels%20of%20exposure,intellectual%20disability%20and%20behavioural%20disorders.
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