Re: Traumatic childhood takes 20 years off life expectancy

[seamus]

hmmm..........lemme think..... mom died at 70.......dad at 78.......so the median would be74.........ill be 47 soon......yyYIPES!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

In parallel research, the neuroscience community has found that that trauma alters the function and development of children’s brains and nervous systems. Epigeneticists, who study how a person’s experiences turn their genes off and on, have found that trauma can turn on genes that manufacture the chemical stressors that affect the brain.

I was abused during my childhood then had my first seizure during a home visit when I attended Rocky Mountain Academy.  I wonder if stress at RMA drove me to the breaking point where I had a seizure?  There is no proof to verify the aforesaid.  It was timing that caught my attention.  The staff could not make a connection between mood swings and my seizure medication.  They were idiots, complete idiots.

[Ursus]

October 6, 2009
Lawrence World Journal
Traumatic childhood takes 20 years off life expectancy
People who experienced considerable trauma during their childhood died 20 years prematurely, CDC researchers have found.
And those suffering this substantial childhood trauma have double the risk for early death compared with adults who had not endured adverse childhood experiences.
“That’s pretty striking,” says Dr. David Brown, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and lead author on the publication. “It’s pretty striking that someone with six or more ACEs died 20 years earlier.”
The study, which appears in the November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the latest in the ongoing 14-year-old Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. The study involves 17,337 adults who became members of Kaiser Permanente, a health care maintenance organization in San Diego, between 1995 and 1997. After visiting a primary care facility at the HMO, they voluntarily filled out a standard medical questionnaire that included questions about their childhood.
The questionnaire asked them about 10 types of child trauma:
? Three types of abuse (sexual, physical and emotional).
? Two types of neglect (physical and emotional).
? Five types of family dysfunction (having a mother who was treated violently, a household member who’s an alcoholic or drug user, who’s been imprisoned, or diagnosed with mental illness, or parents who are separated or divorced).
Each type of trauma — not the number of incidents of each trauma — was given an ACE score of 1. So, a person who has been emotionally abused, physically neglected and grew up with an alcoholic father who beat up his wife would have an ACE score of 4.
Since the first of 50 research papers was published in 1998, the findings have stunned researchers, including the co-founders of the study, Dr. Vincent Felitti, who headed Kaiser’s Department of Preventive Medicine, and Dr. Robert Anda, a research physician and CDC epidemiologist, for three reasons:
? They found a strong link between adverse childhood experiences and adult onset of chronic illness. Those with ACE scores of 4 or more had significantly higher rates of heart disease and diabetes than those with ACE scores of zero. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increased 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression, 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent. Those with an ACE score of 6 had a 4,600 percent increase in the likelihood of becoming an IV drug user.
“You almost never see that kind of increase in health studies of any kind,” Anda said. “It’s almost unprecedented.”
? Adverse childhood experiences are common: 64 percent of the study participants had experienced one or more categories of adverse childhood experiences.
? The 17,337 people who participated in the ACE study are typical, middle-class, working Americans — 75 percent white, 11 percent Latino, 7 percent Asian, and 5 percent African-American. They’re educated: 75 percent attended college and 40 percent have a basic or higher college education. When they filled out the questionnaire, their average age was 57. Most of them had jobs. Half were women, half were men. All of them had good health insurance.
“The study is disquieting in its description of the frequency of abuse against children and how often families appear to be dysfunctional,” wrote epidemiologist Dr. William Foege, former director of the CDC and a senior fellow with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in an editorial in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine when the first ACE research was published in 1998. “It is not what we want to believe about our culture, our neighborhoods, or ourselves. And yet as troubling as the data seem to be, we need to confront the problems described and find an appropriate public health response.”
In the study made public todayTuesday that compares childhood trauma and mortality, researchers used the National Death Index, which captures information about most deaths in the United States, to identify 1,539 deaths that occurred in the Kaiser group between 1995 and 2006. The researchers found that people with six or more ACEs died nearly 20 years earlier on average than those without ACEs — 60.6 years versus 79.1 years. In this particular research, neglect was not included.
The study has limitations. Brown cautions that this is the first research to examine the link between mortality and ACEs, and the group that they analyzed is relatively small. Nevertheless, he says, “even if you take the absolute number out of it, they’re dying substantially younger.” In five years, Brown said, the researchers will repeat the analysis on the next group of deaths among those who participated in the ACE Study.
The significance of the study is that it supports the previous research — that child trauma is an important public health issue, Brown said.
“Throughout all of the ACE studies, we’ve tried to reinforce the importance of prevalence of exposure (to childhood trauma), Brown said. “Being able to tie (ACEs) to premature mortality further reinforces the public health importance and why we need to further look at this.”
“What it meant to me when I saw the data is that all the levels of the ACE pyramid are now filled in,” said Anda, the ACE Study co-founder and co-author on the current research. The pyramid is the conceptual framework for the study. From research in the 1980s and 1990s, the CDC knew that disease risk factors — such as smoking, obesity and alcohol abuse — aren’t distributed randomly throughout the U.S. population.
Research also shows that if a person has one risk factor, he or she usually has another. So, the ACE Study researchers asked: If risk factors for disease, disability and early mortality aren’t randomly distributed, what influences their adoption or development?
Anda, Felitti and other researchers who’ve been working on the data for more than a decade identified that childhood trauma was linked to disease, disability and social problems.
“Neurobiologists filled in the next level,” Anda said.
In parallel research, the neuroscience community has found that that trauma alters the function and development of children’s brains and nervous systems. Epigeneticists, who study how a person’s experiences turn their genes off and on, have found that trauma can turn on genes that manufacture the chemical stressors that affect the brain.
That’s what’s happening in the brains of traumatized children who become hyper-vigilant, edgy, impulsive, and have hot tempers. They’re unable to focus on their schoolwork, they can’t sit still, and they regard social interactions as threats — all behaviors that can get them in trouble or suspended, and that can lead to engaging in risky behaviors, such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol, workaholism, eating too much, etc., that can affect their health.
“This study shows that high levels of ACEs do indeed lead to premature mortality, indeed mediated by pathways we’ve been documenting,” said Anda, who was nevertheless surprised that the relationship among this group was so profound. He thought that the odds were stacked against them in finding a relationship between childhood trauma and early mortality in the Kaiser group. Why?
“Because most of the people in the study were middle aged and older people,” he explained. “We’ve been showing that the risk between social problems and health is so strongly related to ACEs, that older people with high ACE scores are less likely to have survived. It’s research 101: if you go into a coal mine to look for people with bad lung disease and you don’t find much, it’s because the sick ones aren’t in the coal mine anymore.”

Marci F. Hertz, M.S.
Team Lead, Research Application Branch
Division of Adolescent and School Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
4770 Buford Highway NE
MS K-12
Atlanta, GA  30341
Phone: 770-488-2547
Fax: 770-488-5771

Link for the above article by Jane Stevens in the Lawrence World Journal:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/oct/0 ... xpectancy/

[Ursus]

What’s My ACE Score?
October 6, 2009

This is a much-shortened version of the ACE Study questionnaire that 17,337 adults filled out at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. The original questionnaire, which is on the CDC ACE Study site has more than 200 questions.

Prior to your 18th birthday:

1. 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?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often…

Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?

or

Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever…

Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?

or

Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


4. 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?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


5. Did you often or very often feel that …

You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?

or

Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


6. Was a biological parent ever lost to you through divorce, abandonment, or other reason ?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


7. Was your mother or stepmother:

Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her?

or

Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard?

or

Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


10. Did a household member go to prison?

Yes/No.

If yes, give yourself one point.


Now add up your "Yes" answers: _______ This is your ACE Score

[Anonymous]

Code: [Select]

3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever…

Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?
What if I fondled myself to hustler magazine?  I should get 2 points for that.

[Anonymous]

^You get no points for having unimaginative low brow taste in fodder.

[Ursus]

People who experienced considerable trauma during their childhood died 20 years prematurely, CDC researchers have found.

And those suffering this substantial childhood trauma have double the risk for early death compared with adults who had not endured adverse childhood experiences.

"That's pretty striking," says Dr. David Brown, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and lead author on the publication. "It's pretty striking that someone with six or more ACEs died 20 years earlier."

The time one spends in program is during childhood or shortly thereafter.
 
The message is clear, the evidence is here. Being in a program can shorten one's life span.

[Inculcated]

The message is clear, the evidence is here. Being in a program can shorten one's life span.

Well, between that and my #’s for this (What’s My ACE Score?) and the Mayan Zapotec prophecy supposedly corresponding with the Kali Yuga…
I guess I really don’t need to update my résumé.

...I suppose it’s best to just try to make the most of the term here despite having innate tendency to seclude.
How best to go about that is the real mystery.

[Anonymous]

Being in a program can shorten one's life span.

No shit, Sherlock.

[Anonymous]

I take this study with a grain of salt because the researchers did not verify information on questionnaires.

[Ursus]

Being in a program can shorten one's life span.

No shit, Sherlock.

Good point, however, this article/study did not address restraint-related deaths.

The article dealt specifically with stress and trauma related effects on one's health and life expectancy in the long run. The mortality rate was assessed in folk's middle and older age years, l-o-n-g past one's childhood. A perhaps not so surprising take-home (at least to fornits readers) was that trauma experienced in childhood could affect one's physical health, even many many decades later:

They found a strong link between adverse childhood experiences and adult onset of chronic illness. Those with ACE scores of 4 or more had significantly higher rates of heart disease and diabetes than those with ACE scores of zero. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increased 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression, 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent. Those with an ACE score of 6 had a 4,600 percent increase in the likelihood of becoming an IV drug user.

"You almost never see that kind of increase in health studies of any kind," Anda said. "It's almost unprecedented."

[Whooter]

It would be interesting to see a parallel study which shows kids who had a trumatic childhood with half of them going to programs and half do not to see if the program has a positive enough effect to neutralize the damage done during child hood.

[try another castle]

The problem can be solved simply... having a pet can add up to 7 years to your lifespan, so just get around 3 or 4 dogs or cats.

[Ursus]

It would be interesting to see a parallel study which shows kids who had a trumatic childhood with half of them going to programs and half do not to see if the program has a positive enough effect to neutralize the damage done during child hood.

The problem can be solved simply... having a pet can add up to 7 years to your lifespan, so just get around 3 or 4 dogs or cats.

This must be the reasoning behind all those canine- and equine-focused "therapies." Programs are just trying to compensate for some of the damage they do!  

Hint: it won't work. At least, nowhere near well enough. And some kids aren't exactly in a position to care for the animals for a variety of reasons anyway.

I believe Greenbrier Academy has even added falconry to the therapeutic menagerie-milieu:

What does the falconry program involve?
Students have the opportunity to interact therapeutically with an array of falcons. We have a licensed falconer on staff and a permanent home for birds on campus, and students work with the Greenbrier Outfitters of The Greenbrier Resort to have the proper equipment and monitoring by experienced handlers. The girls train and work with birds as often as their schedules permit. Students who exhibit additional interest in the ancient art of hawking will have the opportunity to participate in Falconer’s Club where students can work towards licensure as a falconer. The connection between bird and handler also introduces a greater attentiveness and sensitivity toward relationships.[/list]

[Whooter]

I can see how anyone could find horseback riding to be abusive or harmful to kids at all.  You people should get out of the city once in awhile, try it and if you dont find horseback riding to be therapuetic and if you feel abused afterwards I'll eat my words.  But dont ridicule something you have no knowledge of.