Posted by CB on December 10, 2005 at 11:39:20
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES) is an extremely well-designed epidemiological study that was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control, which is the U.S. counterpart of a national health agency.
"The ACE Study reveals a powerful relationship between our emotional experiences as children and our physical and mental health as adults, as well as the major causes of adult mortality in the United States. It documents the conversion of traumatic emotional experiences in childhood into organic disease later in life. How does this happen, this reverse alchemy, turning the gold of a newborn infant into the lead of a depressed, diseased adult? The Study makes it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle class Americans. One does not ‘just get over’ some things, not even fifty years later."
More information on ACES is located at: http://www.acestudy.org/
The PDF for "The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experience on Adult Health: Turning gold to lead" is located at:
http://www.acestudy.org/docs/GoldintoLead.pdf