A study has revealed that children showing signs of mental illness and disorder don’t share or have an understanding of other people suffering and pain.

Mental illness and disorder in young children

A study has now revealed that mental illness can be discovered at its early stages even in young children. This was a finding according to a study done in the United Kingdom. The researchers got to this conclusion by scanning brains belonging to kids suffering from psychopathy. The subjects failed to show any remorse when picture of people suffering was given to them.

Dr. Essi Viding confirmed that their findings showed that kids with this type of disorder have something that is known as an atypical brain reaction. She emphasized that the discovery should not be utilized to signify any form of permanent disability but to indicate a form of weakness among these children.

FMRI (function Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans were used to monitor the brains reactions. There wasn’t any change witnessed in all the subjects since they all showed no empathy towards the victims in the pictures going through pain.

There was also a comparison made with normal children. The mentally ill children proved to bear an incentive to either hurt or be cruel to others.

Brain anatomy study that explains mental disorder

Certain parts of their brain, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus, ACC (anterior cingulated cortex) and the bilateral anterior insula showed little or no reaction during the study. This was very surprising considering the fact that the ACC’s main function is to regulate the reasoning capacity of a person. This means that the ACC is the part of the brain that helps a person experience various emotions such as empathy and anger management. The inferior frontal gyrus is responsible for fluent speech. Lack of a response from this part of the brain is what makes people have problems with words. The bilateral anterior insula, on the other hand, is responsible for making emotional face such as sad, happy or joyful. Dormancy in this part of the brain is what made the subjects have blank faces even after being shown the pictures.

Dr. viding made it clear that children should always have some sort of reaction to events since this is how they learn. She said that the problem that families with psychopathic children are facing is mostly based on making these kids understand or at least respond to such emotions.

Initial studies done on this subject matter showed that adults with mental disorder were likely to be involved in crimes, drug abuse and relationship problems. This was contradictory to the legendary belief of Hannibal Lecter, who during his times excelled beyond human expectations despite being both a psychopath and intellect.

The good news is that not all children with mental ailments and disorder will be vulnerable to such symptoms and characteristics. This is true since others will tend to have other brain problems that might make them dull or inactive.

Dr. Viding finalized by saying that the finding will help shed some light on various formulas that can be used to help these kids live a somewhat normal life.