Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
The only way to overcome a failure in parenting is healing through the love of the Father. When children are not loved, supported, protected or cherished is shatters their foundations and has a lasting impact. The world is diligently expending time, money and energy to address the fruit of brokenness and the impact on society, but the key to unlocking the damage of a failure in love is to meet Love Himself.
In the mental health world it is common knowledge that abuse and trauma in childhood have a lasting negative impact into adulthood. The metric used to measure the level of trauma and abuse in childhood is commonly known as ACEs which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and is measured on a scale of 0 to 10. The total annual cost of ACEs is $581 billion in Europe and $748 billion in North America.
ACEs causes much of our burden of chronic disease, most mental illness and are at the root of most violence. People who have adverse childhood experiences may contribute to the adverse childhood experiences of their children, causing the impact to be intergenerational.
-Center for Disease Control
Individuals who have adverse childhood experience scores of 4 or more are linked to greater incidences of mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse, criminality, suicide, antisocial behavior and increased recidivism risk according to The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study conducted by Dr. Vincent Feletti in the early 1990s.
In North America at least 20 to 25 percent of girls experience sexual contact abuse. Women exposed to abuse develop a variety of short and long term behavioral and psychological disturbances including depression, anxiety, anger, self-destructiveness, PTSD, suicidal behavior, substance abuse, and difficulties with interpersonal relationships. These outcomes of trauma, particularly PTSD, can lead women to use substances as a coping mechanism to relieve the pain.
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