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The ACEs Too High Network

The 18th Annual Northern California

Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Conference

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The CDC's ACE Study

When all of these experiences plus the usual suspects were measured in the CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study), researchers were stunned to find an unmistakable link between childhood toxic stress and the chronic diseases people developed as adults. This includes heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes, some breast cancer, and many autoimmune diseases, as well as depression, violence, being a victim of violence, and suicide.

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And even more surprising to the researchers was how common childhood trauma is, even among the white middle-class. The study’s participants were 17,000 mostly white, middle and upper-middle class college-educated people living in San Diego, CA. They were all employed and had great health care – they all belonged to Kaiser Permanente, a health maintenance organization, which partnered with the CDC on the study. (Although the word “trauma” is more commonly used to describe physical injury, in this milieu, it refers to any experience that causes toxic stress.)

As Dr. Robert Anda, one of the co-founders of the ACE Study says, “It’s not them. It’s us.”

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ACE score and depression

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About the time that the ACE Study was underway, other research was beginning to explain why childhood trauma had such tragic long-term consequences: Toxic stress physically damages a child’s developing brain. This was determined by a group of researchers, including neurobiologist Martin Teicher and pediatrician Jack Shonkoff, both at Harvard University, and neuroscientist Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University. In a nutshell, toxic overdoses of stress hormones stunt the growth of some parts of the brain, and fry the circuits in others.

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Children with toxic stress live their lives in fight, flight or fright (freeze) mode. They respond to the world as a place of constant danger. They can fall behind in school, fail to develop healthy relationships with peers, or develop problems with authority because they are unable to trust adults. With failure, despair, and frustration pecking away at their psyche, they find solace in food, alcohol, tobacco, methamphetamines, inappropriate sex, high-risk sports, and/or work. They don’t regard these coping methods as problems. They see them as solutions to escape from depression, anxiety, anger, fear and shame.

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ACEs Too High Network

(soon ACEs Connections)

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ACEsTooHigh.com news site

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Lincoln High School, Walla Walla, WA

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The city of Tarpon Springs, FL

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Jefferson County Public Health

Port Townsend, WA

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Dave Lockridge, ACE Overcomers

Merced, CA

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American Academy of Pediatrics

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There's so much happening, and it's beginning to make a difference.

Washington State learned about the ACE Study and the neurobiological research about 10 years ago, and encouraged many of its communities to integrate ACE concepts. So far, a crisis nursery center, a teen center, public health departments, K-12 schools, juvenile justice centers and police departments are screening for ACEs and developing new programs. The communities that have adopted ACE concepts are already seeing a reduction in ACE scores.

So, I'll be following these developments on the ACEsTooHigh.com news site, and encouraging people to join the ACEs Too High Network (soon to be called ACEs Connections). I invite you to join. The more people who learn about it, the more opportunity they have to share best and worst practices, to copy the projects that work, and to encourage their communities to support them, we may have a shot at turning this ACE crisis around.

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Thank you!

Jane Stevens - jstevens@mmjourno.com

ACEsTooHigh.com - news site

ACEs Too High Network (ACEs Connections) - social network

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List of links

Academy on Violence and Abuse (for ACE Study DVD)

ACEsTooHigh.com news site

ACEs Too High Network - social network

CDC's ACE Study

Center on the Developing Child (Harvard University)

Children's Resilience Initiative

Washington Family Policy Council