Adverse Childhood research has been around for a while but recently it has moved front and center in the conversation on childhood trauma. Thanks to people like Dr. Robert Anda co-principal investigator of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research and Oprah Winfrey, adverse childhood experiences as a direct cause of developmental and health problems later in life, are getting the attention that they deserve. As someone who works with relational trauma, I deal with the effects of these forms of abuse or neglect that are all too often at the hands of those we love and need for our very survival as children.
6 min clip from Dr. Anda defining ACE’s
During one of his lectures, Dr. Anda described why ongoing traumatic experiences such as growing up with addiction, abuse, or neglect in the home can have such tenacious effects: “For an epidemic of infuenza, a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado, the worst is quickly over; treatment and recovery efforts can begin. In contrast, the chronic disaster that results from ACEs is insidious and constantly rolling out from generation to generation”. If the effects of toxic stress are not understood so that children can receive some sort of understanding and support from home, school, and community, these children simply “vanish from view . . . and randomly reappear — as if they are new entities — in all of your service systems later in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as clients with behavioral, learning, social, criminal, and chronic health problems” (Anda, et al., 2010,).
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