What happens to people that are never touched?

there have been studies done with orphan babies adopted by loving families, babies up to 5 years old that had never been touched- they developed a wierd social-cognitive disorder- How sad, my mother died in a nursing home, I went there everyday and hung out with her all day till the end, some of those people were so starved for affection, company, it broke my heart.

Babies who are not touched / handled /cuddled / loved in ‘old-fashioned’ orphanages did or became severely retarded. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080522172007AAyNJNc

but, i am talking about grown-ups [if we ever are] 20+

lol, lol!

I was in a coffee shop with a coworker, when a homeless man walked in, and spoke to my friend. He said he just felt alone, and wondered if my friend would shake his hand.
Dave did shake his hand, and the homeless man left much happier than he came in.
Dave was quite impressed by this, and asked me what I thought. I just told him it wasn’t the first time I had seen someone homeless asking for a hand-out.
Yes, this is a true story.

handout, hand out?

The problem you cite may just be beginning as we are educating a generation of children to NOT be touched or intimately involved with adults . [ FINE , we meant for them to not be ‘familiar’ with adult strangers , but will not that carry over to their intimate care of family uberadults?]

How DO we retain the intimacy of family while stil scaring the Bejesus out of them as regards everyone else?

@virtualist well, not on the same topic, but I caught a news story on the local tv channel yesterday (not watching it, I was just walking by, honest!) about how to protect your children from predators during Trick or Treat. More scare the crap out of parents and their kids BS.

there were apples with oldtime razor blades in them when my kids were little.-never let them go on their own. i made hallowe’en costumes to fit over snowsuits!

@faye, read this maybe it will jog your memory.

thanks, i do remember. we had neighbors writing their names and addresses on homemade poporn balls. always a bag check before kids could dive into the loot.

@faye I am just getting started in my nursing career and am doing a placement in a long-term/palliative care hospital. Alot of the patients get regular visitors, but as you said most of them are just left there, forgotten. I think it kind of becomes our responsibility or duty to make sure that those people who are left out get some kind of attention or human interaction every day. It sounds hard to do(on top of everything else we do) but for me, it’s harder to stand by, watching and doing nothing about it.

just hold their hand for a bit. rest your hand on their shoulder with a soft circular rub while talking or feeding. another major point——don’t stuff food in, you don’t eat like that. touch can take the place of conversation—especially when so many are deaf. but i’m not talking about old age. i’m talking about 20— 60. i see them in my day-to-day doings.

Oh, thats me! I don’t like to be hugged, touched, kissed, etc. I can’t tell you the last time I hugged a member of my family or something like that. And the entire.. “rest your hand on their shoulder” thing would make me freak out. I just don’t like people being on me. I need my space ;P

I am never touched. I miss it.

I am a hugger, and if you ever need a hug, just ask. I know how important touch is, and those that don’t get social physical contact often suffer from what I have always called ‘skin hunger.’

@PandoraBoxx your comment makes me sad.

With me it’s the other way around. I really don’t like being touched at all. I absolutely hate it when people touch me. That can be a problem too, people just don’t expect that from a person. It’s not that I don’t like people, I just don’t like anyone to touch me.

can be difficult during rush hour

I was never really touched too often growing up.

It meant that for the first two years of our relationship, my wife could not really pet me, touch my stomach or sides or legs, etc, as it was such a foreign, freaky, and super-ticklish experience to me, having barely gotten hugs since childhood.

After two years though, some kind of deep-seated animal trust thing flipped in my head, and now it’s fine, though I do kind of react like a little puppy when she touches my stomach- my legs and arms kinda kick in all directions.

There was a study done in an orphanage around the time of WWII on this. One group was given all the basics of life but were not to be touched unless it was necessary. The other group were nursed and had carers fluffing over them every night. The group that wasn’t touched had a substantially higher mortality rate.

Another study was done with monkeys which showed that a baby monkey would snuggle up to a stuffed toy monkey and starve before it would go near a toy monkey made from thorns that held good food.

Sorry, I don’t have references for either of these.

yeah, studied that in psych many years back. i was talking about grown-ups tho

@faye I don’t imagine it would be much different. Adults are better able to master their emotions, but that would just mean it would take longer for them to feel the effects.

yeah, i think we feel the effects. thank god for daughters, dogs, and cats

Unfortunately, the monkey study with the real mother, the terry cloth mother and no mum at all were done at my uni in the 1960s. I’m sorry. It was wrong to treat those babies that way. And the weird studies with the schizophrenics and their drawings of cats were also done at my school in the 860s. ::sigh:: :(

But the results were that without touch, one dies. At least babies die. Adults just get warped and sad and depressed.

@aprilsimnel Wow, do you have the original papers anywhere?

No I don’t have access, but here’s the mention. Actually (since I can’t go back to the post and correct it), the studies were done in the 50s. And also, I thought it was my school, but it’s a guy named Louis Wain who developed schizophrenia and drew the crazy cats. He’s now long dead. I shouldn’t believe everything teaching assistants tell me, eh?

I did hear somewhere…that we will die without touch… but the specifics i’m not sure of and can’t remember where I’m afraid. I’m pretty sure though that we do need it… the touch of another human being…holding someone in whatever capacity can be so powerful and I’m not sure we really understand this properly yet. I’d love to read more about this actually. Thanks for the question!! GQ x

@lynneblundell I don’t think we will physically die without touch, like we would if we go without sleep, but it does make people into certain types of psychotics. Or if you believe Stephen King stories, weird overly-religious parents will give you supernatural powers. Carrie, anyone?

My kid brother was adopted, and he spent the first year of his life left in a crib, given a pop bottle when he cried, and his bio-mom was a user.

I take it he was not touched lovingly before we got him, and I have to say, he can barely relate with people at all, and he has no trust for anyone.

@Truefire That is so sad – I have wanted to volunteer in a hostpital and hold babies for years now since hearing about this “phenomenom.” I should go right now… We all should.