Conference on childhood trauma planned in April [Topeka, KS]

Florence Crittenton Services of Topeka is hoping to involve a broad range of people in its conference on adverse childhood experiences in April.

Dana Schoffelman, CEO of Florence Crittenton, said the April 16 conference will focus on “adverse childhood experiences,” and one of the speakers will be Vincent Felitti, a researcher with insurer Kaiser Permanente who worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the impact of those experiences.

Adverse childhood experiences include having a parent who was frequently physically or verbally abusive, being sexually abused, being neglected, having divorced parents, witnessing domestic violence or adult substance abuse, having a family member who was mentally ill and having a family member go to prison.

The more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) a person had as a child, the more likely he or she is to have mental health problems, abuse drugs or alcohol, engage in risky sexual behaviors, smoke, be physically inactive and be obese. All of those factors increase a person’s risk of dying prematurely from heart disease, cancer, liver disease or other chronic conditions.

Schoffelman said Florence Crittenton and Topeka Justice and Unity Ministry Project partnered to bring in speakers about how ACEs impact a person’s health as an adult, ways to reduce the effects on children and how to help adults deal with the effects of their experiences. For example, children are less likely to later suffer negative effects from their experiences if they have healthy relationships with other adults, and just asking adults about their experiences has been shown to reduce their emergency room visits, she said.

“Just having this information has been very powerful and helpful for people to make the connection back to the root cause of some of their challenges,” she said.

The information isn’t just useful for people who work in mental health or with children, Schoffelman said. Primary care doctors can use it as a way to start a conversation with patients, and even supervisors and human resources managers may find it useful when they need to address employees’ negative behavior that may stem from old experiences, she said.

“Adverse childhood experiences don’t just impact people in childhood,” she said.

For more information or to sign up, visit www.FloCritKansas.org/index.php?page=501015.

[See the original article at http://cjonline.com/news/2015-...trauma-planned-april]