When the first results of the survey were due to come in, Anda was at home in Atlanta. Late in the evening, he logged into his computer to look at the findings. He was stunned. “I wept,” he says. “I saw how much people had suffered and I wept.”
This was the first time that researchers had looked at the effects of several types of trauma, rather than the consequences of just one. What the data revealed was mind-boggling.
The first shocker: There was a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, as well as mental illness, doing time in prison, and work issues, such as absenteeism.
The second shocker: About two-thirds of the adults in the study had experienced one or more types of adverse childhood experiences. Of those, 87 percent had experienced 2 or more types. This showed that people who had an alcoholic father, for example, were likely to have also experienced physical abuse or verbal abuse. In other words, ACEs usually didn’t happen in isolation.
The third shocker: More adverse childhood experiences resulted in a higher risk of medical, mental and social problems as an adult.
To explain this, Anda and Felitti developed a scoring system for ACEs. Each type of adverse childhood experience counted as one point. If a person had none of the events in her or his background, the ACE score was zero. If someone was verbally abused thousands of times during his or her childhood, but no other types of childhood trauma occurred, this counted as one point in the ACE score. If a person experienced verbal abuse, lived with a mentally ill mother and an alcoholic father, his ACE score was three.
Things start getting serious around an ACE score of 4. Compared with people with zero ACEs, those with four categories of ACEs had a 240 percent greater risk of hepatitis, were 390 percent more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema or chronic bronchitis), and a 240 percent higher risk of a sexually-transmitted disease.
They were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, seven times more likely to be alcoholic, and 10 times more likely to have injected street drugs.
People with high ACE scores are more likely to be violent, to have more marriages, more broken bones, more drug prescriptions, more depression, more auto-immune diseases, and more work absences.
“Some of the increases are enormous and are of a size that you rarely ever see in health studies or epidemiological studies. It changed my thinking dramatically,” says Anda.
Two in nine people had an ACE score of 3 or more, and one in eight had an ACE score of 4 or more. This means that every physician probably sees several high ACE score patients every day, notes Felitti. “Typically, they are the most difficult, though the underpinnings will rarely be recognized.”
The kicker was this: The ACE Study participants were average Americans. Seventy-five percent were white, 11 percent Latino, 7.5 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, and 5 percent were black. They were middle-class, middle-aged, 36 percent had attended college and 40 percent had college degrees or higher. Since they were members of Kaiser Permanente, they all had jobs and great health care. Their average age was 57.
As Anda has said: “It’s not just ‘them’. It’s us.”
The ACE study may be the most important study on the effects of childhood trauma ever published. That the results are so shocking to nearly everyone is testimony to how important an improved understanding of the problem really is.
Decades later, the study is still relatively unknown.
The ACE study gives scientific weight to Jesus' comments about children in the bible, especially Matthew 18:6 about not offending children. It validates the approach to teaching and childrearing found at Summerhill School, Sudbury Valley School, and in Jean Leidloff's The Continuum Concept. It explains Alice Miller's findings in For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence.
Everything we are doing here at GA and elsewhere to improve the world will ultimately be for naught if we fail to improve treatment of the young.
Thank you again for taking all the time to write all this , so much valuable information ! I’m still going through it , I’m keeping it in my research files at the office!
It just occurred to me that you probably and reasonably thought I was quoting from the video at the top of this post. I should have opened my comment with "Related" or the like; sorry for the confusion. I was hurried and distracted while writing it. But the ACE study illuminates the results and pervasiveness of childhood trauma like few other things do.
Was just listening to this video (ripped and listened to as a podcast) this afternoon, and Dr. Mate directly mentions this study, I believe, around the 50 minute+ mark.
Mate distinguishes between two types of traumatic experience: one, bad things that should not have happened, and two, good things that should have happened but which didn't.
E.g. one, abuse, but two, a lacking in the love that parents can provide to their children when necessary
Thank you for that, and for posting the video at the top of this post.
Yes, both active harm and a lack of love -- or lack of something needed at particular times during development, such as crawling or the heavy full-body massage through the birth canal, when one is delivered by C-section instead -- cause harm.
The need for better treatment of the young is a critically important part of the Great Awakening.
I just finished reading through it and I am blown away. I also followed a link to this article, What ACEs/PCEs do you have?, which has the way they measured ACE scores in the study, based on ten questions. All I'll say is this, everyone should answer these ten questions. They may just come out the other end stunned.
But here's an amazing, and very telling excerpt from the article you linked (emphasis mine):
So, if you were Vincent Felitti, whom would you pick as your first audience to reveal your stunning findings? A group relatively informed about obesity that would greet the new information with extreme interest, praise and applause? Natch. So, in 1990, Felitti flew to Atlanta to give a speech to the members – many of them psychologists and psychiatrists — of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. The audience listened quietly and politely. When he finished, one of the experts stood up and blasted him. “He told me I was naïve to believe my patients, that it was commonly understood by those more familiar with such matters that these patient statements were fabrications to provide a cover explanation for failed lives!”
So basically, people struggling with obesity are wholly to blame for their condition. They are weak. They are gluttonous. They are lazy. They are unintelligent. They are... Well, you get the picture. Basically fat people hate, coming from those who are supposed to offer compassionate, informed healing and guidance. I even see that same hate here on GAW and over at PW as well.
Of course, for their own health and well-being, obese people (or alcoholics, or drug addicts, etc.) must do the hard work to overcome their afflictions/addictions/issues. But maybe, just maybe, a little more compassion and a little less hate would help more than hurt.
All in all, what a fantastically informative rabbit hole of information! Again, thank you for sharing it.
You're very welcome, /u/HumblePede. I'm happy to see a few people here understanding and responding positively to the ACE study and its results; I honestly can't think of another study that illuminates the human condition more directly. I'd love for it to get more exposure.
Denial in the psychiatric and other medical professions is on pretty much the same level as denial among normies in regards political corruption, corporate malice, and the outright evil being perpetrated by many of the "elite" in and out of government. No amount of evidence will change the minds of some.
And you're certainly right: answering the ACE questionnaire would open eyes for a lot of people, although many would respond "So what? That happened to me and I'm OK, I overcame it." Denial is such a basic response to repressed trauma.
I'm no exception. A woman once told me about how hurt she was that her family moved across a border when she was six; she lost all her friends and so on and the trauma stayed with her into adulthood. I had to restrain myself from laughing and saying something stupid like "Hah, that's NOTHING!" -- an immediate defensive reaction, covering for my own pain of having moved many times in my childhood.
Compassion is warranted to adults who were traumatized in childhood or infancy -- infancy isn't even addressed in the ACE study, of course, but very early trauma is particularly powerful, esp. regarding suicide -- but compassion TODAY doesn't remove the trauma of yesterday; it can only help someone deal with that trauma in a healthier fashion.
The most important teaching of the ACE study, IMO, is the need to raise children properly -- or as properly as a given child's parents CAN. Freedom for children, love and compassion -- but not constant, overbearing concern -- and responsibility appropriate to age go a very long way toward creating emotionally healthy children who are easy to be with, and who become healthy adults and good neighbors.
Nothing can replace an emotionally healthy childhood.
At the end (starting ca 51:00), Maté speaks about Trump and Killary. He attributes Trump's words “The world is a horrible place” to his childhood trauma and alleges several.
Nope, Gabor, DJT speaks from knowledge, not from fear.
However, “the side of beef” gets explained, too. “She developed pneumonia” (which is an expression of fright!) and “sucked it up”, as her mother taught her. Pneumonia is not slept out on next morning, but nice try of coverup, and clearly not from Maté's personal experience.
Just shows that nobody is perfect. Mate is super spot on in this particular area, but his understanding of DJT and what is driving him is not exactly what I would call accurate. And that's OK, in my view.
Psychologists who view DJT or Maga or the Great Awakening through the lens of psychology without a grasp of the providential significance of the era, the movement and the man will continue to miss the mark.
Most anons realize things about DJT that we've learned or been introduced to by Q see an aspect that many others cannot yet see.
Related:
https://tatlife.com/the-adverse-childhood-experiences-study-the-largest-most-important-public-health-study-you-never-heard-of-began-in-an-obesity-clinic/
From the article -- all emphasis mine:
When the first results of the survey were due to come in, Anda was at home in Atlanta. Late in the evening, he logged into his computer to look at the findings. He was stunned. “I wept,” he says. “I saw how much people had suffered and I wept.”
This was the first time that researchers had looked at the effects of several types of trauma, rather than the consequences of just one. What the data revealed was mind-boggling.
The first shocker: There was a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, as well as mental illness, doing time in prison, and work issues, such as absenteeism.
The second shocker: About two-thirds of the adults in the study had experienced one or more types of adverse childhood experiences. Of those, 87 percent had experienced 2 or more types. This showed that people who had an alcoholic father, for example, were likely to have also experienced physical abuse or verbal abuse. In other words, ACEs usually didn’t happen in isolation.
The third shocker: More adverse childhood experiences resulted in a higher risk of medical, mental and social problems as an adult.
To explain this, Anda and Felitti developed a scoring system for ACEs. Each type of adverse childhood experience counted as one point. If a person had none of the events in her or his background, the ACE score was zero. If someone was verbally abused thousands of times during his or her childhood, but no other types of childhood trauma occurred, this counted as one point in the ACE score. If a person experienced verbal abuse, lived with a mentally ill mother and an alcoholic father, his ACE score was three.
Things start getting serious around an ACE score of 4. Compared with people with zero ACEs, those with four categories of ACEs had a 240 percent greater risk of hepatitis, were 390 percent more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema or chronic bronchitis), and a 240 percent higher risk of a sexually-transmitted disease.
They were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, seven times more likely to be alcoholic, and 10 times more likely to have injected street drugs.
People with high ACE scores are more likely to be violent, to have more marriages, more broken bones, more drug prescriptions, more depression, more auto-immune diseases, and more work absences.
“Some of the increases are enormous and are of a size that you rarely ever see in health studies or epidemiological studies. It changed my thinking dramatically,” says Anda.
Two in nine people had an ACE score of 3 or more, and one in eight had an ACE score of 4 or more. This means that every physician probably sees several high ACE score patients every day, notes Felitti. “Typically, they are the most difficult, though the underpinnings will rarely be recognized.”
The kicker was this: The ACE Study participants were average Americans. Seventy-five percent were white, 11 percent Latino, 7.5 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, and 5 percent were black. They were middle-class, middle-aged, 36 percent had attended college and 40 percent had college degrees or higher. Since they were members of Kaiser Permanente, they all had jobs and great health care. Their average age was 57.
As Anda has said: “It’s not just ‘them’. It’s us.”
I can’t wait to take the time to go through the material you posted for us! I’ll be spending time on this , thank you
The ACE study may be the most important study on the effects of childhood trauma ever published. That the results are so shocking to nearly everyone is testimony to how important an improved understanding of the problem really is.
Decades later, the study is still relatively unknown.
The ACE study gives scientific weight to Jesus' comments about children in the bible, especially Matthew 18:6 about not offending children. It validates the approach to teaching and childrearing found at Summerhill School, Sudbury Valley School, and in Jean Leidloff's The Continuum Concept. It explains Alice Miller's findings in For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence.
Everything we are doing here at GA and elsewhere to improve the world will ultimately be for naught if we fail to improve treatment of the young.
Thank you again for taking all the time to write all this , so much valuable information ! I’m still going through it , I’m keeping it in my research files at the office!
It just occurred to me that you probably and reasonably thought I was quoting from the video at the top of this post. I should have opened my comment with "Related" or the like; sorry for the confusion. I was hurried and distracted while writing it. But the ACE study illuminates the results and pervasiveness of childhood trauma like few other things do.
Was just listening to this video (ripped and listened to as a podcast) this afternoon, and Dr. Mate directly mentions this study, I believe, around the 50 minute+ mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9B5mYfBPlY
Mate distinguishes between two types of traumatic experience: one, bad things that should not have happened, and two, good things that should have happened but which didn't.
E.g. one, abuse, but two, a lacking in the love that parents can provide to their children when necessary
Thank you for that, and for posting the video at the top of this post.
Yes, both active harm and a lack of love -- or lack of something needed at particular times during development, such as crawling or the heavy full-body massage through the birth canal, when one is delivered by C-section instead -- cause harm.
The need for better treatment of the young is a critically important part of the Great Awakening.
u/Narg, thank you for this link/info!!!
I just finished reading through it and I am blown away. I also followed a link to this article, What ACEs/PCEs do you have?, which has the way they measured ACE scores in the study, based on ten questions. All I'll say is this, everyone should answer these ten questions. They may just come out the other end stunned.
But here's an amazing, and very telling excerpt from the article you linked (emphasis mine):
So basically, people struggling with obesity are wholly to blame for their condition. They are weak. They are gluttonous. They are lazy. They are unintelligent. They are... Well, you get the picture. Basically fat people hate, coming from those who are supposed to offer compassionate, informed healing and guidance. I even see that same hate here on GAW and over at PW as well.
Of course, for their own health and well-being, obese people (or alcoholics, or drug addicts, etc.) must do the hard work to overcome their afflictions/addictions/issues. But maybe, just maybe, a little more compassion and a little less hate would help more than hurt.
All in all, what a fantastically informative rabbit hole of information! Again, thank you for sharing it.
You're very welcome, /u/HumblePede. I'm happy to see a few people here understanding and responding positively to the ACE study and its results; I honestly can't think of another study that illuminates the human condition more directly. I'd love for it to get more exposure.
Denial in the psychiatric and other medical professions is on pretty much the same level as denial among normies in regards political corruption, corporate malice, and the outright evil being perpetrated by many of the "elite" in and out of government. No amount of evidence will change the minds of some.
And you're certainly right: answering the ACE questionnaire would open eyes for a lot of people, although many would respond "So what? That happened to me and I'm OK, I overcame it." Denial is such a basic response to repressed trauma.
I'm no exception. A woman once told me about how hurt she was that her family moved across a border when she was six; she lost all her friends and so on and the trauma stayed with her into adulthood. I had to restrain myself from laughing and saying something stupid like "Hah, that's NOTHING!" -- an immediate defensive reaction, covering for my own pain of having moved many times in my childhood.
Compassion is warranted to adults who were traumatized in childhood or infancy -- infancy isn't even addressed in the ACE study, of course, but very early trauma is particularly powerful, esp. regarding suicide -- but compassion TODAY doesn't remove the trauma of yesterday; it can only help someone deal with that trauma in a healthier fashion.
The most important teaching of the ACE study, IMO, is the need to raise children properly -- or as properly as a given child's parents CAN. Freedom for children, love and compassion -- but not constant, overbearing concern -- and responsibility appropriate to age go a very long way toward creating emotionally healthy children who are easy to be with, and who become healthy adults and good neighbors.
Nothing can replace an emotionally healthy childhood.
Thank you It’s been awhile since I listened or read anything from him , this was exceptional!
This has been known for decades, its too obvious to miss.
At the end (starting ca 51:00), Maté speaks about Trump and Killary. He attributes Trump's words “The world is a horrible place” to his childhood trauma and alleges several.
Nope, Gabor, DJT speaks from knowledge, not from fear.
However, “the side of beef” gets explained, too. “She developed pneumonia” (which is an expression of fright!) and “sucked it up”, as her mother taught her. Pneumonia is not slept out on next morning, but nice try of coverup, and clearly not from Maté's personal experience.
A noteworthy point.
Just shows that nobody is perfect. Mate is super spot on in this particular area, but his understanding of DJT and what is driving him is not exactly what I would call accurate. And that's OK, in my view.
Psychologists who view DJT or Maga or the Great Awakening through the lens of psychology without a grasp of the providential significance of the era, the movement and the man will continue to miss the mark.
Most anons realize things about DJT that we've learned or been introduced to by Q see an aspect that many others cannot yet see.