Adverse Childhood Experience Study-Is your past trauma slowing killing you? Part 1

Trauma often creates a state of severe and chronic stress. It is akin to a 3rd degree emotional burn that lingers long after someone has gotten out of the fire.

One landmark study, the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study is the largest study of its kind ever conducted (more than 17,000 study participants) to determine the range of how adverse childhood experiences and health related outcomes and addictions intersected. The effect studied was unprecedented.

The Centre for Disease Control teamed up with Kaiser Permanente to develop:

"… a large-scale epidemiologic study of the influence of stressful and traumatic childhood experiences on the origins of behaviors that underlie the leading causes of disability, social problems, health related behaviors, and causes of death in the United States. Unlike most prior studies in this area which had tended to focus on single types of childhood abuse (especially sexual abuse) and specific health problems (usually mental health issues), the ACE Study was designed to simultaneously assess childhood exposure to multiple types of abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and types of serious household dysfunction such as substance abuse.‖ (http://www.acestudy.org/files/ARV1N1.pdf pg. 3)

The ACE study revealed that the majority of participants had experienced adverse childhood experiences (i.e. trauma‘s) 50 years earlier and that most of us are not just subject to one adverse condition (i.e. having an alcoholic parent and everything else is perfect) but in fact groupings of toxic experiences.

Among the Initial ACE Study Findings: ACEs Are Common

• Two-thirds of participants reported at least one ACE

ACEs Tend to Occur in Groups

• Of persons who reported at least one ACE, 87% reported at least one other ACE.
• 70% reported 2 or more others, and more than half had 3 or more others!
• Only 1/3 of those studied had not had adverse experiences and for those that did, their past was still affecting them (their health) 50 years later. The adage of ―Time will heal all wounds‖ just doesn‘t add up.

How does this relate to addiction?

Of those with higher ACE scores here are the results:

When compared to persons with an ACE score of 0: Those with an ACE score of 4 or more were

•  twice as likely to be smokers
•  12 times more likely to have attempted suicide
•  7 times more likely to be alcoholic and
• 10 times more likely to have injected street drugs.

The behaviors such as alcohol or drug abuse, smoking, or sexual promiscuity are likely the result of the effects of ACEs on childhood development, which we now know to be neurodevelopment. In many, if not most cases the behaviors may act to alleviate the emotional or social distress that results from ACEs. Thus, these behaviors, typically considered to be problems, continue because they function as short-term solutions, even though they have detrimental, long-term effects. The findings from the ACE Study suggest that problems such as addiction frequently have their origins in the traumatic experiences of childhood (pg.3)"

More of these findings will be discussed in the next blog.

Best of health and warmest regards, Paul Radkowski

Psychotherapist, CEO/Clinical Director, Life Recovery Program