Richard Bentall, a clinical psychologist, academic, and Fellow of the British Academy, summed up the science a few years ago: “The evidence of a link between childhood misfortune and future psychiatric disorder is about as strong statistically as the link between smoking and lung cancer,” he wrote. “There is also now strong evidence that these kinds of experiences affect brain structure, explaining many of the abnormal neuro-imaging findings that have been reported for psychiatric patients.”[12]
