ACE Trauma Assessment
- 'RecaliBRAINtion'©
- Aug 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 19
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)
The Adverse Childhood Events Study ACE; By Anda & Felitti, 2003 details the multiple impacts of attachment disruption and trauma that occur in childhood and endure in later life. Psychotherapists have always understood that events in childhood affect the well-being of adults, but this correlation is far from established in the medical community or the culture at large. The ACE study-overseen by Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda at Kaiser Permanente's Department of Preventative Medicine in San Diego, and in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - has sought to change that. Felitti, who ran an obesity treatment program in San Diego, was puzzled by a common outcome primarily seen in his female patients: They would be very successful in losing weight and then many would regain it. He interviewed these patients and was startled to learn that most had been sexually abused as children and either consciously or unconsciously feared becoming sexually attractive.
Their obesity was their protection.
This insight eventually led to the study of over 17,000 middle-class men and women (in equal numbers), with an average age of 57, in an effort to discern the ongoing effects of early childhood trauma on health (Lanius, Vermetten, & Pain,
2010). The ACE score is determined by the number of "Yes" responses to the following questions:
Prior to your 18th birthday were you subject to any of the following circumstances;
A. Abuse
1) emotional: recurrent threats, humiliation
ACE.
physical: beating, not spanking
contact sexual abuse
B. Household dysfunction
mother was treated violently
household member was alcoholic or drug user
household member was imprisoned
household member was chronically depressed, suicidal, mentally ill or in psychiatric hospital
not raised by both biological parents
C. Neglect
physical
emotional (Felitti, 2010, pp. 78-79)
The number of discreet events experienced by an individual is only loosely represented by the responses of "often" or "very often," and yet the number of times a person answers yes to these ten categories, the ACE score-strongly predicts illness and premature death in adulthood.
The ACE test was designed to help identify people’s exposure to adverse events during childhood.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Trauma Assessments are not to be underestimated and the way questions are asked are key
Psychiatric consequences are clear:
54% of current depression and 58% of suicide attempts in women can be auributed to adverse childhood events and ... male children with an ACE Score 6 or more have a 46-fold increased likelihood of later become an injection drug user compared with a male child with an ACE Score 0.
The ACE score also correlates with a wide range of medical problems, Met not seen as psychological, including liver disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), coronary artery disease, and autoimmune disease.
Individuals with ACE Score 6 and higher had a lifespan almost two decades shorter than seen in those with an ACE Score 0 but otherwise similar characteristics.
A recent study (Shalev et al., 2013) found that "compared with their counterparts, the children who experienced two or more kinds of violence exposure showed significantly more telomere erosion between age 5 baseline and age 10 follow-up"
Telomeres are chromosomal structures that get shorter as we as we age. This study suggests that ageing is already advanced in very young children who experience violence. Some have some grey hair at age 7.
Childhood trauma makes itself known in physical as well as mental problems, which is why patients who use neurofeedback may show striking physical as well as emotional and behavioural improvement. Neurofeedback, sees changes in eye-sight, hearing, smell, taste, thyroid function, stability of blood sugar, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), blood pressure, motion sickness, migraine, neuropathy and other chronic pain problems, and skin rashes, among other physical complaints, while training the brain to quiet anxiety or depression. The physical and the mental are inseparable.
FND and other diagnosis are common. BPD (borderline personality disorder) and neurodivergence.
As a lived experience coach, experiencing both trauma and being a neurofeedback practitioner, I have seen many examples of ACE outcomes in real life. My own brother was one such statistic. A childhood of abuse and neglect leading to becoming very over-weight & passing away at only 49 years old riddled with illnesses. I didn't even need to wait for the coroners report to know he had died of a broken, rupture heart.
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