Emotional Problems and Childhood Trauma

In a couple of earlier Posts I mentioned the research called ACE Studies because it correlates Adverse Childhood Events (Trauma and Abuse) with later Adult diseases. By asking about 20,000 adults about their childhoods and also reading their medical charts, a remarkable set of data has emerged. It showed two things.

1. Childhood Trauma is quite high in the American Middle Class
2. Trauma is almost never healed and it leads to dramatic health problems many years later.

Adverse Events were listed as losing a parent, growing up in an alcoholic family, suffering abuse, etc. The number of events could range from Zero to Eight.

The author says:

When we looked at purely emotional outcomes like self-defined current depression or self- reported suicide attempts, we find equally powerful effects. For instance, we found that an individual with an ACE Score of 4 or more was 460% more likely to be suffering from depression than an individual with an ACE Score of 0. Should one doubt the reliability of this, we found that there was a 1,220% increase in attempted suicide between these two groups. At higher ACE Scores, the prevalence of attempted suicide increases 30-51 fold (3,000-5,100%)!

Overall, using the technique of population attributable risk, we found that between two-thirds and 80% of all attempted suicides could be attributed to adverse childhood experiences.

The dramatic increase in children born out of wedlock and reared without a Father around and reared with alcohol and drugs and abused sexually is skyrocketing. It is hard to imagine the long term medical, psychological and spiritual implications of such statistics.