The answer will leave you speechless.
Adults who experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), aka traumatic experiences as children, still pay for what happened to them years, even decades later. But what are adverse childhood experiences? And how do they affect you today?
This article shall attempt to explain ACEs and to help you recognize just how much what happened long ago influences your life now.
What are ACEs?
Many articles have been written about adverse childhood experiences and the study that first identified them. The study I am referring to is the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study conducted between 1995 and 1997. Involving 17,000 participants who shared with the researchers information about their experiences in childhood, the researchers wanted to see if there is a correlation between those that are negative with their subject’s health difficulties.
The CDC-Kaiser study was the first and largest of its kind and brought breathtaking insights showing that there is indeed a correlation between lousy health in adulthood and adverse childhood experiences. It also brought to light that childhood trauma is more common than had been thought, and it is not limited by race, creed, economic status, or any other demographic.
In yet another study published in 2005, it was found that 16% (1 in 6) men and 25% (1 in 4) women reported sexual abuse before their 18th birthday. They also found that abuse rarely came in only one form, as 80% reported at least one other type of abuse in their childhood experience.
Some examples of adverse childhood experiences are listed below:
- Experiencing child abuse which can be emotional, sexual, physical, or mental
- Experiencing neglect, either emotional or physical
- Living in a home where there is substance abuse
- Witnessing domestic violence
- Experiencing the divorce or separation of caregivers
- Witnessing the mental illness of a household member
- Having a member of the household goes to prison
- Frequently moving to new homes and areas
- Experiencing food insecurity
- Experiencing the death or abandonment of a family member
The above list is only a partial list as there are many adverse childhood experiences as there are children to suffer from them.
How Do Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect You Today?
You may be scratching your head asking this question and wondering if you have been negatively impacted as an adult by what happened to you when you were a child.
The answer may or may not surprise you.
Adverse childhood experiences may be impacting you in many ways, including physical health problems, mental health conditions, personally and societally.
Physical health problems. Having experienced adverse experiences in childhood, such as neglect or abuse, may be impacting your life today. Some potential consequences of adverse childhood experiences may include any or all of the following:
- Cancer
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- Physical injury
- Maternal problems
- Contracting a sexually transmitted infection
According to a study by Holgerson et al., in 2018, people who have a high score in adverse childhood experiences have an increased risk of obesity and poor outcomes following weight loss efforts such as bariatric surgery.
Mental health conditions. As the consequence of experiencing adverse experiences, you may have now developed mental health issues such as the following:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Complex post-traumatic stress disorder
- A substance abuse disorder
- Addictive behaviors towards food
- Suicidal behaviors and actions
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevention of ACEs might reduce the number of cases of depression by twenty-one million, increasing the quality of life for millions.
Personal problems. People who have experienced adverse childhood experiences are more likely to experience other challenges in their lives, which may include:
- Challenges related to finishing their education
- Challenges related to lost job opportunities
- Becoming a violent perpetrator themselves
- Experiencing teenage pregnancy
- Becoming involved in sex trafficking
The above list is not all-inclusive.
Societal problems. Adults who experienced negative experiences in childhood are at an enormous economic and societal disadvantage, which leads to long-term healthcare and incarceration costs.
Experiencing ACEs also leads to a higher risk of violent offending and causing damages to other people’s property. But perhaps the most heinous of all the problems from ACEs is that people who experienced them may contribute to the adverse childhood experiences for their children, causing the effects of ACEs to become intergenerational.
What Can Society Do to Eliminate Adverse Childhood Experiences?
Much research is done today to find the answer to the above question.
According to a report published by the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Division of Violence Prevention, 62% of adults across 23 states reported they had experienced at least one ACE during childhood, with ~25% stating they experienced three or more ACEs.
The report also said, “Creating and sustaining safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for all children and families can prevent ACEs and help all children reach their full health and life potential.”
Evidence collected by the Centers for Disease Control points to the fact that adverse childhood experiences can be prevented by:
- Strengthening economic supports for families
- Promoting social norms that protect against violence and adversity
- Ensuring a solid start for children and paving the way for them to reach their full potential
- Teaching skills to help parents and youth handle stress, manage emotions and tackle everyday challenges
- Connecting youth to caring adults and activities
- Intervening to lessen immediate and long-term harms
Clearly, as a society must lay aside our prejudices and pride to accept that ACEs are preventable, and only through spending money to shore up supports for families and children can we defeat their destructive effects.
Pulling It All Together
Millions of children experience adverse childhood experiences every day. If you are interested in finding your ACE score, please visit this site and answer the ten questions as honestly as you can. The higher your ACE score, the more your life may have been affected.
Armed with this knowledge, you can talk to your doctor and get a referral to a therapist or at least understand better why you have the problems you do.
Having a high ACE score is not a death sentence. Indeed, knowing yourself better can help you find solutions to any problems you have developed.
To do further reading on adverse childhood experiences, go to this CDC page and click on many research papers on the subject.
“I know I won’t live long. So, I’m going to stand strong and not sit down in disbelief, hold my head up high and not waste my time wondering why my life has to be so rough and unfair. I’m going to strive and live every day for the better until that day arrives.” ~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett
If you or a loved one live in the despair and isolation that comes with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, please, come to us for help. CPTSD Foundation offers a wide range of services, including:
- Daily Calls
- The Healing Book Club
- Support Groups
- Our Blog
- The Trauma-Informed Newsletter
- Daily Encouragement Texts
All our services are reasonably priced, and some are even free. So, to gain more insight into how complex post-traumatic stress disorder is altering your life and how you can overcome it, sign-up; we will be glad to help you.
My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.
This an excellent introductory summary. I want to emphasize that both adults who experienced child abuse trauma and the medical profession generally overlook or discount the impact of a trauma history on adult physical health and chronic disease. I recently reviewed the magnitude of this substantial impact in “The importance of child abuse and neglect in adult medicine” in the medical journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior 211 (2021), 7 September 2021© 2021 Elsevier Inc. Any person with a significant history of abuse should review this survey and raise the issue with their treating primary health professional, sharing the article to optimize their care.
Thank you. I hope my readers will look up your link to the paper. I agree people who undergo significant medical trauma and others can also develop CPTSD. Thank you for your comment. Shirley
Maybe you are mis-interpreting my message. Research shows that increased adult physical illness follows the common types of childhood trauma and neglect (ACEs experiences) not “medical trauma. Medical trauma is another issue all together.”
Oh, I did misinterpret, sorry about that. I know that many adults form CPTSD but it is primarily formed in childhood from trauma. sorry about the mix-up. Shirley
Hi Jeffrey
I wrote a memoir that came out in August titled The Sensitive One, which explores Ace’s and its long-term effects, both mentally and physically. It’s worth the question: Did my childhood cause my breast cancer?
I have attempted to address the Ace issue with my primary caregiver and oncologist. They didn’t know what I was talking about, which was disappointing.
As you know, the long-term effects of childhood trauma never go away; we have to figure out a way to deal with the stressors associated with it.
Keep up your great work!!
Thank you for adding your information. I found a paper supporting the idea that cancer and adverse childhood experiences are linked.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5892430/
I’m sure there are others. I too had breast cancer and attribute it to ACEs. The type I had was not inherited genetically and seems to have come out of the blue.
Shirley
Shirley
Thank you, I did read that study. There seems to be more information lately about the connection of ACEs to long-term physical illness.
Sue
(1) I have not read your memoir, but I love the title. As a family doc, one of my practice goals was to protect “sensitive” people. As humans we are all sensitive. Some people have built in protection/resistance ? genetic, ?personality, ? experience but others remain open hearted and vulnerable. There is no doubt, tho it is not scientific, that vulnerable, sensitive people are much more affected by the experience of abuse or neglect. I believe we live in a society that exploits people (for their labor) and has few cultural strategies for supporting sensitive/vulnerable people, be they poets, artists, trans, mothers, children etc
(2) In my recent review of adult physical disease associated with child abuse trauma I found no clear relationship to breast cancer. Abused people are proven heavy smokers, so the relation of ACEs
to lung cancer can be demonstrated. Breast cancer is common and random, but there are epidemiological correlates: obesity, not having children, having children at a late age, not breast feeding, smoking. Abuse trauma has not been related to breast cancer tho it may be related to the intermediary correlates.
(3) There is no doubt in my mind that relating your experiences and participating in this form is therapeutic for you – building resilience, sorting out feelings – and helpful to others – as exposing yourself feeds their courage to deal with their circumstances.
Keep up the good work!
REPLY TO SUSAN MORRIS
(1) I have not read your memoir, but I love the title. As a family doc, one of my practice goals was to protect “sensitive” people. As humans we are all sensitive. Some people have built in protection/resistance ? genetic, ?personality, ? experience but others remain open hearted and vulnerable. There is no doubt, tho it is not scientific, that vulnerable, sensitive people are much more affected by the experience of abuse or neglect. I believe we live in a society that exploits people (for their labor) and has few cultural strategies for supporting sensitive/vulnerable people, be they poets, artists, trans, mothers, children etc
(2) In my recent review of adult physical disease associated with child abuse trauma I found no clear relationship to breast cancer. Abused people are proven heavy smokers, so the relation of ACEs
to lung cancer can be demonstrated. Breast cancer is common and random, but there are epidemiological correlates: obesity, not having children, having children at a late age, not breast feeding, smoking. Abuse trauma has not been related to breast cancer tho it may be related to the intermediary correlates.
(3) There is no doubt in my mind that relating your experiences and participating in this form is therapeutic for you – building resilience, sorting out feelings – and helpful to others – as exposing yourself feeds their courage to deal with their circumstances.
Keep up the good work!
I was discussing a point with Kate, my partner in marriage for 44 years now. We both suffered as children. I am left with little memory. Most of what I know, my mom told Kate, it is enough. Very few adverse life events were not ticked off. My mom left with myself and my 3 sibs, because “I knew your father was going to kill you”. I was 8 when we left. I cannot remember him, his voice, gone.
I brought up two points actually. The first; was there a greater amount, or degree of abuse following the Second World War and Korean War? For Boomers, there was no child protection act, not until 1961. Were the horrors of war, and resultant PTSD to blame at that time? Or, alternately, If a man “were somebody” during the war, and back home slips into anonimymity, would the pain of his family members assuage untolerable narcissistic injury.
The next idea is abstract, While CPTSD involves multiple factors biologically, hypothalamic-adreno-pituitary axis is involved to the point that it changes shape (sorry no reference on hand). Those changes and resultant changes that occur throughout the body, have a huge psycho-social aspect. My question was this: “By changing in the face of insurmountable odds, are our bodies try to save us, or destroy us?”.
I did not have a best friend till I was 12, that is when I began to have friends. I did not talk to anyone. I was shot at by the police when I was 16. I was unarmed, running away. They were dealing with a “bad egg”. Perhaps that is how the village sees us. Perhaps they want us gone.
However, I don’t have fear like other people, that can be good and bad. Every time I believed I was soon to die (MVAs, Rock climbing falls, drunken idiocy). I would watch and wait, so I could see. Nothing is ever ok. I can’t go to medical appointments, because I really don’t trust anyone, especially men. It’s hard because I have an immune system modulated disorder. Thanks so much father. It is a very hard thing to try to undo.
I would like to say, I gladly battle it each day. If I succumb, I lose and my father loses. If I live, stretch, and grow, maybe he will not walk the earth a hungry ghost. Perhaps he will never have to feel the horror that is prolonged severe child abuse and family dysfunction. My heart tells me he did, but I will not know.
Kate and I have 2 boys, 44 and 32. The elder is disabled, the younger an ER Doc. I do not share the abuse, I truly do not remember well. Instead, my expectation that no descendent of this family will ever be brutalized at the hands of another family member again. There can be no secrets or lies in a healthy home.
Bill I really respect and admire your extended reflection and introspection on your childhood traumas and your life’s course. I think you should relax a bit and feel proud. Obliteration of overwhelmingly bad childhood memories is a natural defense mechanism and there is no need to explore that wilderness. Many of your personal characteristics (no close friends, risk taking, drinking, distrust of men) may well be symptomatic responses to your childhood threats – they have helped you survive and even flourish and matters could be a lot worse. You have achieved great victories just by being able to ponder your experiences and especially by being married for 44 years and by raising children in a flourishing family.
I’m a 58 year old adult male I was I had childhood adversity and it was never addressed my parents didn’t believe me and now at 58 I’m finally addressing it all my adult life I have had challenges have been to prison three times full blown alcoholic / drug addict and all along I always wondered what the heck happened to me as I was from very normal family one of five and everybody ended up having successful careers except the second smartest of the bunch which was me I finally the address didn’t many people want me to shut up but if I don’t face it I’ll never be free and right now I’ve been diagnosed with depression anxiety post traumatic stress disorder I have a couple tunnel I have a I had a hernia I have bad knees haven’t worked for a year and a half and about to lose everything and I wonder if I if I did the right thing by addressing it is there any help for people such as me
This is something I brought up with my pcp early on in our visits, but he just looked at me with a blank stare. I don’t think medical schools take this all too seriously yet, or at least my pcp had nothing to offer vis a vis linking my health issues to my ACE’s score. Not only did I have to explain what I meant by ACE’s, but no conversation ensued.
CPTSD isn’t in the DSM 5 yet so many schools are not teaching it as a diagnosis yet. I’m sorry you had this experience. I hope you find a trauma-informed therapist soon. Shirley
OMG yes this is very, very common. I am so glad you brought this up! It must have been intimidating, even painful, for the doc to ignore your intimate sharing. Part of the point of my reply to this blog was that there is a huge amount of ignorance about ACEs and childhood trauma and its impact on adult mental and physical health among practicing physicians. While there are disputes about the best effective treatments, there are certainly concerned approaches to people in your position that open up wonderful therapeutic avenues. One point of my writing here is to encourage members of PACEsConnection to get on the band wagon with me, as I will eventually planning a full campaign to wake them up!
Since so much of our lifelong health comes from our childhood experiences, childhood mental health-care should generate as much societal concern and government funding as does physical health, even though psychological illness/dysfunction typically is not immediately visually observable. After all, a psychologically and emotionally sound (as well as a physically healthy) future should be every child’s foremost right, especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.
But due to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support programs for other people’s troubled families?’
While some may justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed; and it seems that distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.
You are most insightful to observe the ” Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support programs for other people’s troubled families?’
The problem with that attitude is, even if we don’t consider the lack of compassion and caring, that according to published data about 2/3 of the homeless, 2/3 of the residents of juvenile hall and 1/2 of prisoners are people who have a history of childhood abuse trauma. Furthermore the best data show that of 66 mass shooters where childhood history is known, 60 had significant abuse history. A healthy society needs healthy thriving families. A goal we should all be working on.
I understand that my own brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It’s like a discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly I will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. It is like a form of brain damage.
My own experience has revealed to me that high-scoring adverse childhood experience trauma that essentially results from a highly sensitive introverted existence notably exacerbated by an accompanying autism spectrum disorder, can readily lead an adolescent to a substance-abuse/self-medicating disorder, including through eating.
It’s what I consider to be a perfect-storm condition with which I greatly struggle(d), yet of which I was not aware until I was a half-century old. I believe that if one has diagnosed and treated such a formidable condition when one is very young he/she will be much better able to deal with it through life.
Though I’ve not been personally affected by the addiction/overdose crisis, I have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known and enjoyed the euphoric release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. The self-medicating method I utilized during most of my pre-teen years, however, was eating.