By Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 23, 2019 In 1946, Life magazine published an exposé on mental hospitals, focusing on the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry. The title: “Bedlam 1946.” That dreadful facility, like so many others, eventually closed. A good thing? Not completely, according to Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, who maintains that people simply went from one horrific situation to another, from the grossly inadequate institutions to the dangerous streets. In neither...

By Jud Brewer, Dr. Jud, October 2019 With a growing public interest in and research base underlying mindfulness, clinicians are increasingly interested in learning what it is, how it works, what research is credible, and how to help their patients. This seminar series will help primary care providers understand how our brains form unhealthy habits that lead to common yet difficult to treat conditions such as obesity and anxiety, what mindfulness is (and isn’t), how mindfulness works in the...

Although it’s too soon to tell if integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) sciences is making a difference for the teens living at Home on the Range , a residential treatment center in Sentinel Butte, ND, it’s made a huge difference for the people who work there. They now understand that kids aren’t born bad. “ACEs has enlightened us,” says Mike Gooch, clinical program director for the center, which is located on a 1,600-acre...

Dr. Flojaune Cofer and Ben Duncan , each from public health backgrounds that focus on health disparities, addressed ACEs in the context of health equity for their panel entitled ACEs, Race, and Health Equity: Understanding and Addressing the Role of Race and Racism in ACEs Exposure and Healing . Cofer and Duncan co-presented to a standing-room-only audience at the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access co-hosted by ACEs Connection and the Center for Youth Wellness Oct.16-17 in San Francisco.

When children and their parents first visit  Northeast Treatment Centers (NET) Children’s Behavior Health Services  in Philadelphia, they fill out a 10-question survey about their adverse childhood experiences so that therapists can...

Since August 2016, more than 300 three-year-olds who visited Kaiser Permanente’s pediatric clinics in Hayward and San Leandro have been screened for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as living with a family member who is an alcoholic or losing a parent to separation or divorce. But when the idea to screen toddlers and their families for ACEs was first broached at the Kaiser Permanente Hayward Medical Center, the staff were, in a word, “angsty,” says Dr. Paul Espinas, who led the...

Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...

In October 2015 in Pueblo, CO, the staff members of a primary care medical clinic – Southern Colorado Family Medicine at the St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center – start asking parents of newborn babies to kids five years old about the parents’ adverse childhood experiences and the resilience factors in their lives. They ask the same questions of pregnant women and their partners in the hospital’s high-risk obstetrics clinic. The results are so positive after the first year that the clinic starts...

Currently the court I work in rural, Northern Michigan we are screening all youth in the county I work who enter the justice system. They are screened for ACEs in the pre-disposition phase. This is the same time they are screened for substance abuse...

He says: Addiction shouldn’t be called “addiction”. It should be called “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking”. He says: Ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking (what traditionalists call addiction) is a normal response to the adversity experienced in childhood, just like bleeding is a normal response to being stabbed. He says: The solution to changing the illegal or unhealthy ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior of opioid addiction is to address a person’s adverse childhood...

The aptly named Great Starts program at the Helen Ross McNabb Center in Knoxville, TN, provides a six-to-nine month residential treatment and two-year follow-up program for pregnant mothers and moms with newborns recovering from substance abuse. Earlier this year, curious about the early childhood history of its residents, the center started asking the women about their ACEs history. The results would not have been surprising to those familiar with ACEs: Of the 16 moms who filled out the...

By Jessica Gardezy, Center for Youth Wellness, December 3, 2019 The Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) announced today it is partnering with two leading U.S. health systems in the Southeast to launch a screening program on childhood adversity. CYW's National Pediatric Practice Community (NPPC) has done on-site training at the headquarters of Atrium Health and Novant Health in Charlotte, N.C., in preparation for trauma screening at six pediatric clinics across the city. The Charlotte-based...

Cissy's note: This article was written by the same @Claudia Gold who was the featured guest in one of our Parenting with ACEs chats . Here are excerpts from her article published in Psychology Today.

A father in county jail is ordered to take a parenting class, but isn’t too enthusiastic about it. As part of the class, he learns about the ACE Study, and does his own ACE score. “Oh my god!” he announces to the class. “I have 7 ACEs.” His mother’s an alcoholic. His dad’s been in and out of jail. He himself started dealing drugs at age 11, and doing drugs at 14. “I’ve got two kids at home experiencing the same things I did,” he says. The light bulb goes on. A few days after a woman who’s...

This is an older article but it is appropriate for us as we seek system changes (in all systems affected by Adverse Childhood Experiences) including the Health Care System:  The article is from last year's Pediatric News and is by Dr. Howard who...

By Joan Cook, The Hill, October 10, 2019 Today is World Mental Health Day. And, California, a state with 10 percent of the U.S. population, just announced that it’s introducing the first toll-free statewide mental health line for non-emergency emotional support and referrals. What a wonderful way to kick off this occasion. This Peer-Run Warm Line is a reason to celebrate. As a psychologist, I’ve witnessed first-hand the emotional pains people carry, and how hard it is for them to come in for...

Our agency(NET)is using the ACES as part of our Bio-psychosocial assessment which is completed when they are seen for an Intake for OP services. Scores of 3 or more will have a prompt in our electronic record system to put a treatment goal on the plan to address some of the identified trauma or to do a follow up screening with a different tool. Our hope is this will assist all clinicians in being more sensitive to these issues as part of all phases of our treatment process.

Originally Posted by Harry Allen: Our agency(NET)is using the ACES as part of our Bio-psychosocial assessment which is completed when they are seen for an Intake for OP services. Scores of 3 or more will have a prompt in our electronic record system to put a treatment goal on the plan to address some of the identified trauma or to do a follow up screening with a different tool. Our hope is this will assist all clinicians in being more sensitive to these issues as part of all phases of our...

PACEs Connection is excited to roll out our summer 2023 *CRC* curriculum dates. Members who complete the CRC will qualify for a fall 2023 fellowship program.