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We must not lose sight of the facts about the immediate and long-term consequences that malevolent trauma has on growing infant-children. There is nothing about being an American that changes the outcome that severe stress-distress has on physiological development during a little one’s MOST CRITICAL stages of early growth.
As this blog repeats over and over again neglect, abuse, deprivation, exposure to violent conflict including verbal abuse to ANYONE in an infant-child’s environment and other conditions of an early unsafe, insecure, inadequate early attachment environment WILL IMPACT physiology in development, thus changing the body a survivor will live in and with for the rest of their lifespan.
I want to highlight here yet again the important work the Center for Disease Control has been accomplishing to PROVE the link between Early Adverse Childhood experiences and lifelong adult suffering of all kinds. As states within our nation deliberate about how to meet their budgets IN THE RED it will MOST OFTEN happen that assistance to the most desperate infant-children, their families, along with assistance to poor and sick who are MOST LIKELY adult survivors of infant-child malevolent environments will be cut.
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CHILD ABUSE SURVIVORSHIP IN THE NEWS:
Childhood Trauma May Shorten Life By 20 Years
CDC Research Finds Problems in Childhood Can Be Lifelong
By JOSEPH BROWNSTEIN
ABC News Medical Unit
Oct. 6, 2009
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The Center for Disease Control’s Adverse Childhood Experience (CDC-ACE) study is not without limitations. All 17,421 participants were insurance members which means that information from the many other uninsured levels of our society were not included. If they had been (or are in the future) how much more child abuse connected lifelong adult devastation would be seen?
I would like to see the model of this study expanded through the use of the ACE questionnaires in a far wider variety of settings, preferably included in every human well-being study our nation produces. At the moment, I want to simply highlight the important work the CDC has been doing over the past 14 years with its studies of the consequences of child abuse for survivors for your thought and consideration by presenting some information from their website on Adverse Childhood Experiences as follows:
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest investigations ever conducted on the links between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being. As a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego, Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) members undergoing a comprehensive physical examination provided detailed information about their childhood experience of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. Over 17,000 members chose to participate. To date, over 50 scientific articles have been published and over 100 conference and workshop presentations have been made.
The ACE Study findings suggest that these experiences are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the United States. Progress in preventing and recovering from the nation’s worst health and social problems is likely to benefit from the understanding that many of these problems arise as a consequence of adverse childhood experiences.
Here is one website about the study:
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About the study:
The ACE Study was initiated at Kaiser Permanente from 1995 to 1997, and its participants are over 17,000 members who were undergoing a standardized physical examination. No further participants will be enrolled, but we are tracking the medical status of the baseline participants.
Each study participant completed a confidential survey that contained questions about childhood maltreatment and family dysfunction, as well as items detailing their current health status and behaviors. This information was combined with the results of their physical examination to form the baseline data for the study.
The prospective phase of the ACE Study is currently underway, and will assess the relationship between adverse childhood experiences, health care use, and causes of death.
More detailed scientific information about the study design can be found in “The relationship of adult health status to childhood abuse and household dysfunction,”* published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 1998, Volume 14, pages 245-258.
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The ACE Pyramid represents the conceptual framework for the Study. During the time period of the 1980s and early 1990s information about risk factors for disease had been widely researched and merged into public education and prevention programs. However, it was also clear that risk factors, such as smoking, alcohol abuse, and sexual behaviors for many common diseases were not randomly distributed in the population. In fact, it was known that risk factors for many chronic diseases tended to cluster, that is, persons who had one risk factor tended to have one or more others.
Because of this knowledge, the ACE Study was designed to assess what we considered to be “scientific gaps” about the origins of risk factors. These gaps are depicted as the two arrows linking Adverse Childhood Experiences to risk factors that lead to the health and social consequences higher up the pyramid. Specifically, the study was designed to provide data that would help answer the question: “If risk factors for disease, disability, and early mortality are not randomly distributed, what influences precede the adoption or development of them?” By providing information to answer this question, we hoped to provide scientific information that would be useful for the development of new and more effective prevention programs.
The ACE Study takes a whole life perspective, as indicated on the orange arrow leading from conception to death. By working within this framework, the ACE Study began to progressively uncover how childhood stressors (ACE) are strongly related to development and prevalence of risk factors for disease and health and social well-being throughout the lifespan.
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Major Findings
Childhood abuse, neglect, and exposure to other traumatic stressors which we term adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are common. Almost two-thirds of our study participants reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more ACE. The short- and long-term outcomes of these childhood exposures include a multitude of health and social problems. The ACE Study uses the ACE Score, which is a count of the total number of ACE respondents reported. The ACE Score is used to assess the total amount of stress during childhood and has demonstrated that as the number of ACE increase, the risk for the following health problems increases in a strong and graded fashion:
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In addition, the ACE Study has also demonstrated that the ACE Score has a strong and graded relationship to health-related behaviors and outcomes during childhood and adolescence including early initiation of smoking, sexual activity, and illicit drug use, adolescent pregnancies, and suicide attempts. Finally, as the number of ACE increases the number of co-occurring or “co-morbid” conditions increases.
Content source: Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
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Adverse Childhood Experiences Study Questionnaires – AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE
This is the simplest version of the ACE questionnaire I have seen that consists of ten questions: What’s YOUR ACE Score? Help me calculate my ACE Score.
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Stop the Storm 