By CATHY THOMAS BROWNFIELD
Family Recovery Center publicist
Dante watched his father, an abusive alcoholic. “Be quiet,” his mother hushed her children. “Don’t make noise and wake him up. You know how he is.” “Hide! He’s coming!”
His older sister would shoo Dante and their younger sister under the bed. Their father had been drinking and would beat their mother and anyone else who got in his way. Dante vowed that when he grew up he would not be like his father.
Caroline didn’t know about the problems in her parents’ marriage until she was 14. She had felt the undercurrents for years but had never been able to define them. Her mother did the best she could with what she had and provided as stable and loving an environment as she could. Caroline thought herself lucky that her father wasn’t home much so that peace could be found there. But there was the night that they had been taken to a safe place where her father could not find them.
Everyone is a product of the environment in which they grow up. The ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study confirms that fact.
“The ACE study calls for an integrated approach to intervene early on children growing up being abused, neglected, witnessing domestic violence, or with substance abusing, mentally ill or criminal household members. All of these childhood stressors are interrelated and usually co-occur in these homes. Prevention and treatment of one ACE frequently can mean that similar efforts are needed to treat multiple persons in afflicted families,” said the study’s co-principal investigator, Robert Anda, M.D. M.S.
In the study it was learned that ACEs have lasting effects on brain development and on, among other things, emotional regulation, body sensations, substance abuse, sexuality, memory, arousal and aggression.
Participants in the decades-long study were approximately age 56. They answered 10 questions to attain their ACE score, questions such as, “Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?” “Did you often or very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special or your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?” “Was a household member depressed or mentally ill or did a household member attempt suicide?”
There is great concern for the strongest relationship between the ACE score and alcohol use and abuse which are a major public health problem. “It is notable that the perpetuation of the cycle of alcohol abuse appears to be tightly interwoven with the number of ACEs, including marriage to an alcoholic.”
Other risk factors related to an individual’s ACE score include HIV/AIDs, smoking and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), depression and suicide attempts, worker performance, direct health care costs, and rates of antidepressant prescriptions.
“The effects of ACEs are long-term, powerful, cumulative, and likely to be invisible to health care providers, educators, social service organizations and policy makers because the linkage between cause and effect is concealed by time, the inability to ‘see’ the process of neurodevelopment, and because effects of the original traumatic insults may not become manifest until much later in life,” advise the authors of the ACE Study.
How was your childhood? Do you want to take the quiz? Stop at Family Recovery Center, 964 N. Market St., to pick up the quiz of 10 questions. Someone will be available to give you an immediate evaluation of your quiz.
Family Recovery Center promotes the well being of individuals, families and communities with education, prevention and treatment programs for substance abuse and related behavioral issues. For more information, contact the agency at 964 N. Market St., Lisbon; phone, 330-424-1468; or e-mail, info@familyrecovery.org. FRC is funded, in part, by United Way of Northern Columbiana County.