ACEs Affect Nearly Two-Thirds Of Americans — So Why Aren’t We Talking About It?

Here’s what you may already know: Adverse Childhood Experiences (or ACEs) are stressful or potentially traumatic experiences that happen before the age of 18 (like having a caregiver who struggled with mental health or substance use, witnessing domestic violence, or experiencing abuse or neglect) — and without seeking therapy and the necessary steps to heal, they can follow you well into adulthood, inadvertently influencing your every action or thought.

Here’s what you may not know: just how rampant ACEs really are — and how extensive their impact on your mental and physical health can be.

The term ACEs can be traced back to a 1998 research study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health-care company Kaiser Permanente. In the study, thousands of adults were asked about stressful or traumatic childhood experiences (including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; parents with substance dependence or mental health disorders; parental separation or divorce; incarceration; and intimate partner violence), and it found that almost two-thirds have experienced at least one. And when done on a national scale, rates of ACEs are similar, with nearly two-thirds of adults experiencing at least one ACE, and one in six adults experiencing four or more ACEs.

“ACEs are associated with our health over a lifetime, so the more ACEs that a person has experienced, the greater their risk of experiencing issues with their mental health (depression, anxiety, suicidality) and their physical health, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and cancer,” says Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, pediatrician, senior advisor to the ACE Resource Network, and California’s first-ever Surgeon General, who not only launched the first statewide effort to train over 20,000 primary caregivers on how to screen for ACEs and respond with informed care, but has set a lofty goal to cut ACEs and toxic stress in California by half in one generation. “When I learned about it as a doctor, it was really important for me to shout it from the rooftops — because so many people don’t know that what happens to us in our childhood can actually impact the way that we feel years later.”

And to break that intergenerational cycle of ACEs, the Office of the California Surgeon General is spreading awareness about the long-lasting effects of ACEs (namely how it can trigger a “toxic stress response” that can negatively impact brain development and mental health), educating folks on ways in which we can heal and live beyond ACEs through the Live Beyond campaign, and offering resources to help young people better understand ACEs, toxic stress, and their effects.

To learn more, visit Live Beyond and watch the clip of our Twitch livestream as Refinery29 Entertainment Director Melissah Yang chats with Dr. Burke Harris about ACEs, the difference between stress and toxic stress, what we can do to mitigate the effects of ACEs, and more.