How might knowing your ACE score affect you?

ACEs is short for Adverse Childhood Experiences; the main concept of ACEs is to take a test and know your score. This score can help you understand your risk for health issues. Your score is determined from ten (10) questions that cover topics from abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction.

Why is it important to be aware of ACE?

ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood. However, ACEs can be prevented. Preventing ACEs can help children and adults thrive and potentially: Lower risk for conditions like depression, asthma, cancer, and diabetes in adulthood.

What is the impact of ACE score?

Researchers found a 30-fold increase in learning or behavior problems (as reported by parents) between children with high ACE scores (4 or more) compared to children with no ACEs. This work helps to connect the dots between social risk factors and educational outcomes.

What is the benefit of knowing your students ACEs score and how can it affect your classroom practices?

ACEs can affect student learning and behavior in the classroom. Children with three or more ACEs are 5x more likely to have attendance issues, 6x times more likely to have behavior problems, and 3x times more likely to experience academic failure.

What are the effects of ACEs in adulthood?

Impact of ACEs

Some of the effects of ACEs on our physical and mental health are: An increase in the risk of certain health problems in adulthood, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as increasing the risk of mental health difficulties, violence and becoming a victim of violence.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Impact on brain, body and behaviour

How do ACEs affect emotional development?

Toxic stress from ACEs can negatively affect children's brain development, immune systems, and stress-response systems. These changes can affect children's attention, decision-making, and learning. Children growing up with toxic stress may have difficulty forming healthy and stable relationships.

How do ACEs impact brain development?

Adverse childhood experiences: the risks

If a person is in a constant state of fear or stress, their brain may adapt to survive within this environment. This may lead to impaired development of areas of the brain involved in logical thinking (such as the prefrontal cortex) and memory (such as the hippocampus).

What are the benefits of ACE assessment?

ACE screening helps identify risks to reproductive health. ACE screening promotes a positive cycle of health by reducing the intergenerational transmission of ACEs and toxic stress.

What impact ACEs has on future and lifelong health and opportunity in children?

ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance use in adulthood. ACEs can also negatively impact education and job opportunities. However, ACEs can be prevented.

What factors contribute to a person's ACEs score?

An ACE score is calculated by adding up 10 specific types of childhood trauma. These experiences include physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect.

What risk behaviors are seen with higher ACE scores?

Indeed, adults with a history of exposure to four or more ACEs, compared to those with no ACEs, are more likely to smoke, abuse alcohol, use illicit drugs, and engage in risky sexual behavior, and there appears to be a dose-response effect (Dube et al., 2003; Felitti et al., 1998; Strine et al., 2012).

What are the health outcomes with a high ACE score?

The impact of ACEs on health and functioning

The greater the number of ACEs a child is exposed to (regardless of the particular combination of ACEs), the greater their risk of developing chronic and cardiovascular conditions in adulthood, such as stroke, respiratory disease, diabetes, and cancer.

What impact do ACEs have on social?

Adverse childhood experiences' (ACEs) negative consequences on health, education, and life opportunities are often explained through the neurodevelopmental changes in a person's stress reactivity and coping, which contribute to the adoption of health-damaging and antisocial behaviors.

How does ACEs affect social development?

Background. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can have lifelong adverse impacts; they can play a role in the development of subsequent emotional, cognitive, and social impairments leading to somatic and mental difficulties, as well as health damaging behaviours.

What is the conclusion of ACE study?

The ACE Study findings suggest that adverse childhood experiences are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness, disability and death as well as poor quality of life in the United States.

What are three important findings of the ACE Study?

The ACE study found a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, incarceration, and employment challenges. The higher the number of ACEs, the greater the incident of negative outcomes as captured in the ACE Pyramid.

What mental issues does ACEs have on individuals?

Thus, studies have found increasing numbers of ACEs to be associated with increasing risks of conditions including depression, anxiety, panic reactions, hallucinations, psychosis and suicide attempt, along with overall psychopathology, psychotropic medication use and treatment for mental disorders [2, 3, 7–11].

How do ACEs affect resilience?

Psychological resilience has been shown to effectively mediate the relationship between ACEs and negative health outcomes since individuals with low levels of resilience may have difficulty with bouncing back from toxic exposure to ACEs.

What impact do ACEs have on depression?

The number of ACEs has a graded relationship to both the prevalence and severity of depressive symptoms. These results suggest that exposure to ACEs is associated with an increased risk of depressive symptoms up to decades after their occurrence.

Why is it important to prevent ACEs?

ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental health, substance misuse, and reduced educational and occupational achievement. Preventing ACEs has the potential to reduce leading causes of death such as heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, diabetes, and suicide.

What are three consequences of toxic stress from ACEs?

The more ACEs a child experiences, the more likely he or she is to suffer from things like heart disease and diabetes, poor academic achievement, and substance abuse later in life.

Do ACEs cause anxiety?

Exposure to ACEs have been consistently associated with poor mental health outcomes in adulthood such as substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and suicidal attempts.

Are people with high ACE scores at risk to have a 20 year difference in life expectancy?

The Impact of ACEs. Across 50 States, 50% of children's ACEs are acquired by the age of 3. If left untreated, children with a high ACE score face a 20-year decrease in life expectancy. Children who experience four or more ACEs are 7.4x as likely to suffer from alcoholism and 12.2x as likely to attempt suicide.

What is the most common ACE score?

Nationally—and in all 50 states and the District of Columbia—the two most common ACEs are economic hardship and the separation or divorce of a parent or guardian. About one-quarter of children have experienced at least one of these events.

How do you recover from a high ACE score?

Active mindfulness techniques, such as those practiced during yoga, have been found to restore balance to the fight or flight response, which is often working overtime in the brains of people with ACEs. This can lower anxiety and depression and decrease the need for destructive coping mechanisms.