After a very difficult upbringing and early adulthood, Sabrina Hanes is doing everything she can to overcome the trauma she experienced and give her daughter, Aroara, the best possible life. (Anne Wernikoff/KQED)
.Listen to the full 30 min special report on the CA Report by Laura Klivans and Anne Wernikoff. Such a powerful story of a powerful young woman, Sabrina Hanes, and a great and thorough overview of the ACE study told from the story of Sabrina. Also read the accompanying article (with a link to ACEs Connection!) See short excerpt below:
Emotional neglect, physical abuse, divorce, a household riven by addiction — science shows that traumas like these in childhood cause poorer health later in life, both mentally and physically.
The first research was conducted in the late 1990s and recently popularized by San Francisco pediatrician and author Nadine Burke Harris. Doctors behind the first study dubbed these childhood traumas “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs, and devised a measurement scale: For each negative experience a person had, his or her “ACE score” would go up by 1 point.
The full range of the ACEs scale goes from zero (no ACEs) to 10 (a person who has experienced all 10 categories of adversity). You can find out your own ACE score by completing the ACEs questionnaire.
A person with four or more ACEs has more than five times the risk of depression, four times the risk for chronic lung disease and double the risk for cancer. An ACE score of six or more shortens life expectancy by 20 years on average.
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