Childhood trauma is at the root of many social and personal issues in our society, and society does not generally pick up problems until long after they have occurred.

 

What are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful incidents or environments which children experience and which have the potential to cause long-lasting trauma.

Psychological trauma is what happens when a person is overwhelmed by stress and feels that he or she is unable to return to a “safe” state. When this occurs, it can cause lasting harm to the brain’s stress responses, potentially leaving those affected by trauma feeling like they are fighting old dangers years after they’ve passed.

In the infographic below, we show a variety of ACEs and the impact they can have on peoples' lives.

 

 

Why is it important to understand ACEs?

Childhood trauma is at the root of many social and personal issues in our society. Studies from the US, UK and elsewhere show clearly that ACEs can significantly raise the likelihood of over 80 negative life outcomes, including suicide attempts, alcoholism, drug addiction, criminality, mental ill health, heart disease, liver disease, obesity and many more. Here's an example of how that might happen.

Jane is a seven-year-old whose dad hits her mum regularly. She’s in a constant state of fear. Because there is no adult to protect her and the threat feels as if it’s ever present, her brain “learns” that she’s in danger at all times. It adapts to this by pumping stress hormones regularly and at higher levels during moments of perceived danger. If this happens over a long period the extra stress hormone response becomes her body’s normal way of functioning.

This constant stress causes her to develop anxiety issues. As a teenager, she becomes a heavy smoker and drinker, drawn to both substances as coping mechanisms for this over-reactive survival response. Despite having potential, she finds it hard to focus in school and underachieves. When she leaves school and begins working, she finds herself regularly feeling distracted, depressed and unproductive. Her anxiety leads her to develop a meek personality, making her easy prey for partners as violent as her dad was. Over the years, all this stress, smoking, drinking, depression and violence take their toll on her health. She develops heart disease and dies at the relatively young age of 56.

The good news is that this is a fictional story. The bad news is that it's also happening for real in many thousands of homes across the UK. The more ACEs a person experiences, the harder it often becomes to develop coping strategies to reduce the impact. The more stress a person undergoes, the higher the risks for things going wrong in that person's life. That's why every ACE in society is important and every one worth tackling.

"Imagine you go to your GP, and they know your ACE score, and they treat you with compassion. Because they know what hell you have been through." (WAVE focus group attendee, August 2018)

Prevention and healing of ACEs It's only by understanding ACEs that we can effectively heal the hurt they cause and give people the power and freedom to transform their lives, breaking the cycle of trauma passing from parent to child as so often happens. As a society, there are a number of steps we can take that will prevent many children from experiencing ACEs and help those who have been traumatised by ACEs resolve, or at least cope better, with ACE impacts. We urgently need to: Prevent ACEs before they occur, especially in the crucial first 1,001 days (from conception to age 2). This includes investing in early years measures that will make parents aware of the impact of ACEs, provide support to help them overcome potential risk factors early on, and install programmes that help young children’s brains develop healthily. Train front-line service workers to work in a trauma-informed way. This approach has a significantly positive impact on a variety of services, including schools and prisons. Find out more about our trauma-informed training here. Create entire communities where knowledge of ACEs and their impact is widespread. Find out what this could mean for your area here.

 

Of the three aims above, the most important is to prevent ACEs before they occur. Only 3-5% of spending on children is spent on prevention, yet over 40% of local authority expenditure is incurred because of issues that could have been prevented upstream, especially during the very early years.

With the enormous cost savings prevention could reap, and the boost to economic productivity that would result, the right measures would pay for themselves many times over in the long run and save taxpayers huge sums.

If you'd like to support us in our goal to make ACE-prevention a national priority, click here.