The Great Disconnect by David Brown As a professional clinician, I have been ruminating on the possibility that as therapists and other forms of helpers, we often deny our own embedded emotional pain, trauma, shame and vulnerability. I think we often will use our professional role as a basis for deciding that our best course of action is to keep burying that pain because if we allowed others access to it, they might think less of us or view us …
Adverse Childhood Experiences and their Lifelong Toll By David Brown & Nicole Fakaua “I just can’t seem to shake my depression, my sense of failure…my lack of energy…it’s all just so much. I’ve been on and off antidepressants for most of my adult life, struggle with the rum…I never seem to hit my breakthrough…I just can’t…” Kai’s voice trails off. Kai is a 34 year old, low income man on his second marriage with two young teen children who …
Reducing the Impact of ACEs: A CCI Program Evaluation By: Dr. Kirk Austin The Adverse Childhood Experiences Summit: BC & Beyond was held at the Sheraton Wall Centre in Vancouver BC on November 14th and 15th, 2017. As a partnership between the Doctors of BC and the BC government, the Shared Care Committee invited members of the educational, medical, and healthcare fields to discuss the latest research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Over 600 people attended each of the days, …
ACEs are potentially traumatic events that can have a lasting impact on youth and adults. This simplified calculator will help you determine what your ACE score is.
In my previous post, I talked about the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACEs) and how this is beginning to shake the foundation of how we view mental health problems. Take the ACEs test here The ACEs study points to a powerful connection between stressful childhood experiences and how it can create lifelong difficulties for people in health, relationships, education, and employment. ACE researchers have mapped out the connections. They say that accumulated ACEs lead to the following steps: Disrupted Brain …
What if we were able to identify a common thread to be found at the root of many health and mental health concerns? The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study is shaking the very foundations of how we have perceived illness and its causes. So much so that researchers are touting ACEs as the number one (#1) factor in life long health outcomes. It has been called the “largest, most important public health study you’ve never heard of.” Here is a …
An introductory video on the impact of childhood trauma, ACES and the connection between life long and chronic health conditions. Dr Jeffrey Brenner states, “I believe ACE scores should become a vital sign, as important as height and weight”.
A short 5 min. video overview of ACEs, what they are and how they impact on lifelong issues over the course of a lifetime.
Ongoing adversity in childhood leads to a chronic state of “fight, flight or freeze.” Researchers at Yale had recently shown that when inflammatory stress hormones flood a child’s body and brain, they alter the genes that oversee our stress reactivity, re-setting the stress response to “high” for life.