scholarly journals ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES REPORTED BY CUSTODIAL GRANDMOTHERS AND THEIR ADOLESCENT GRANDCHILDREN

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S283-S283
Author(s):  
Gregory C Smith ◽  
Frank J Infurna ◽  
Britney A Webster ◽  
Megan L Dolbin-MacNab ◽  
Max Crowley ◽  
...  

Abstract The Risky Family Model postulates that adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are likely to be encountered across generations within custodial grandfamilies which, in turn, may adversely impact their overall well-being. The present study is a pioneering attempt to examine the patterns of ACEs self-reported by custodial grandmothers (CGM) and adolescent grandchildren (AGC) from the same families, and how their total ACE scores correlate with key physical and mental health outcomes. A total of 129 CGM-ACG dyads recruited for a nationwide RCT study completed separately at baseline the 10-item ACE-CDC and 4 items from the ACE-IQ, as well as various standardized measures of physical and emotional well-being. The most frequent ACEs reported by AGC were loss of a parent (60.5%), verbal abuse (58.1%), bullying by peers (46.5%), and living with someone jailed (45.0%). The predominant ACEs for CGM were bullying by peers (48.8%), verbal abuse (48.1%), living with a mentally ill person (34.1%), being touched sexually (29.5%), and loss of parent (29.5%). Only 10.1% of ACG and 15.5% of CGM reported 0 ACEs, whereas 65.1 % of ACG and 59% of CGM reported > 3 ACEs. For ACG, total ACE scores correlated significantly with externalizing (r=.32) and internalizing (r=.30) difficulties, self-esteem (r= -.28), loneliness (r=.27), school problems (r=.24), and physical health (r= -.26). For CGMs, anxiety (r=.23) and depression (r=.19) only were correlated significantly with total ACEs. We conclude that although both CGM and ACG reported alarmingly high levels of ACEs, different patterns and correlates exist between the generations. [Funded by R01AG054571]

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hael Simon Brenas ◽  
Eun Kyong Shin ◽  
Arash Shaban-Nejad

ObjectiveWe introduce the Semantic Platform for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)Surveillance (SPACES). It facilitates the access to the relevant integrated information, enables discovering the causality pathways and assists researchers, clinicians, public health practitioners, social workers, and health organization in studying the ACEs, identifying the trends, as well as planning and implementing preventive and therapeutic strategies.IntroductionAdverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been linked to a variety of detrimental health and social outcomes. In the last 20 years, the association between ACEs with several adult health risk behaviors, conditions, and diseases including suicides, and substance abuse [1], mental health disturbances and impaired memory [2], nervous, endocrine and immune systems impairments [3], and criminal activities [4] have been studied. One of the challenges in studying and timely diagnosis of ACEs is that the links between specific childhood experiences and their health outcomes are not totally clear. Similarly, an integrated dataset builtfrom multiple sources is often required for effective ACEs surveillance. The SPACES project aims at providing a semantic infrastructure to facilitate data sharing and integration and answer causal queries [5] to improve ACEs surveillance.MethodsWe create the ACEs ontology to facilitate the integration of data coming from various distributed sources (e.g. ontologies, databases, surveys, interviews, and literature) and maintain interoperability between the data sources. We re-used some of the existing bio-ontologies in the domain, although they captured the domain’s knowledge in different levels of granularity, e.g., Homeless is defined in SNOMED CT and Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) with different hierarchies, or some related concepts may be disconnected, e.g., SNOMED CT defines Abuse but not Verbal Abuse while MedDRA defines Verbal abuse but not as an Abuse. In order to improve reasoning with the aggregated data, we perform two different kinds of inference. Semantic inference uses the ACEs ontology to creates new conclusions by connecting similar concepts. On the other hand, statistical inference is used to formulate rules that link co-occurring concepts. These two kinds of inference, statistical and semantic, work in tandem and the conclusions from one method can then be used as the basis for the other kind of inference.ResultsThe ACEs Ontology is a unique resource for capturing knowledge in the domain of AdverseChildhood Experiences. The ontology will be openly and freely available via the relevant online community’s portals (e.g. The NCBO BioPortal). The logical validation of the ontology is performed using description logic reasoners. A set of use-case scenarios are designed to demonstrate the feasibility and usability of the ontology for data integration and intelligent query answering.ConclusionsIn this paper, we present the SPACE project that aims to develop a platform to improve adverse childhood experiences surveillance. The tool uses semantic and statistical methods to improve data access, integration, and reasoning.References[1] Vincent J. Felitti, Robert F. Anda, Dale Nordenberg, David F. Williamson, Alison M. Spitz,Valerie Edwards, Mary P. Koss, and James S. Marks. Relationship of childhood abuse and householddysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The adverse childhood experiences (ace) study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4):245–258, 5 1998.[2] Robert F Anda, Vincent J Felitti, J Douglas Bremner, John D Walker, Charles Whitfield, Bruce D Perry, Shanta R Dube, and Wayne H Giles. The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood: A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 256(3):174–186, 04 2006.[3] Andrea Danese and Bruce S. McEwen. Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease. Physiology & Behavior, 106(1):29 – 39, 2012. Allostasis and Allostatic Load.[4] James Garbarino. Aces in the criminal justice system. Academic Pediatrics, 17(7, Supplement): S32 – S33, 2017. Child Well-Being and Adverse Childhood Experiences in the US.[5] Okhmatovskaia A, Shaban-Nejad A, Lavigne M, Buckeridge DL. Addressing the challenge of encoding causal epidemiological knowledge in formal ontologies: a practical perspective. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2014; 205:1125-9. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 1418-1439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Giovanelli ◽  
Christina F. Mondi ◽  
Arthur J. Reynolds ◽  
Suh-Ruu Ou

AbstractThere is an extensive literature describing the detrimental effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACE; e.g., abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction) on physical and mental health. However, few large-scale studies have explored these associations longitudinally in urban minority cohorts or assessed links to broader measures of well-being such as educational attainment, occupation, and crime. Although adversity and resilience have long been of interest in developmental psychology, protective and promotive factors have been understudied in the ACE literature. This paper investigates the psychosocial processes through which ACEs contribute to outcomes, in addition to exploring ways to promote resilience to ACEs in vulnerable populations. Follow-up data were analyzed for 87% of the original 1,539 participants in the Chicago Longitudinal Study (N = 1,341), a prospective investigation of the impact of an Early Childhood Education program and early experiences on life-course well-being. Findings suggest that ACEs impact well-being in low-socioeconomic status participants above and beyond the effects of demographic risk and poverty, and point to possible mechanisms of transmission of ACE effects. Results also identify key areas across the ecological system that may promote resilience to ACEs, and speak to the need to continue to support underserved communities in active ways.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S235-S235
Author(s):  
Jooyoung Kong ◽  
Yin Liu ◽  
David Almeida

Abstract Extensive evidence suggests that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can lead to negative health effects across a lifetime. This study examines the impact of ACEs on the frequency of providing daily support (i.e., unpaid assistance, emotional support, and disability-related assistance) to family members and the moderating effects of ACEs in the association between providing daily support to family and daily negative affect. Using the National Study of Daily Experiences II, we analyzed a total of 14,912 daily interviews from 2,022 respondents aged 56 on average. Key results showed that a greater number of ACEs were associated with providing more frequent emotional support to family. We also found the significant interaction effect that adults with more ACEs showed greater negative affect on the days when they provided assistance to family members with disabilities. The findings underscore the long-term negative impact of ACEs on daily well-being in the context of family relationships.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 582-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paraniala Silas C. Lui ◽  
Michael P. Dunne ◽  
Philip Baker ◽  
Verzilyn Isom

Compared with many parts of the world, there has been little research in Pacific Island nations into the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on adult health. This is a significant gap for local evidence-based child protection. We describe findings from a survey of 400 men aged 18 to 70 years recruited from randomly sampled households in Honiara city, Solomon Islands. Most men reported multiple adversities during childhood (80.7% 3 or more; 46% 5 or more), such as exposure to community and domestic violence, bullying, physical maltreatment, and sexual abuse. Men with multiple ACEs had significantly lower well-being and more psychological distress, recent stressful life events, and health risk behaviors. This study reports the first observation that betel quid chewing increased as a function of multiple ACEs. In comparison with recent East Asian studies, the Solomon Islands data suggest that the collective geographic category of “Asia-Pacific” masks significant intraregional differences in childhood adversities.


Hypertension ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica C Myers ◽  
Mark K Santillan ◽  
Debra S Brandt ◽  
Amy K Stroud ◽  
Julie A Vignato ◽  
...  

Hypertensive diseases are associated with adverse experiences in childhood as well as depression. In order to determine if these associations were present in women with preeclampsia (PreE), a particularly devastating hypertensive disease in pregnancy, the scores from three questionnaires: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) were compared between women with PreE (n=32) and women without PreE (n=46) between 9 and 48 months postpartum (IRB# 201808705). ACE scores are calculated by summing an individual’s affirmative responses to specific adverse experiences during childhood. In our study, the average ACE score of individuals with PreE was higher than that of women without PreE (1.69 vs. 1.02, P=.04). We also divided women into groups based on whether their ACE score was ≤3 or ≥4 due to evidence that individuals who have experienced ≥4 ACEs are at greatest risk for physical and mental health conditions. Among our participants, 80% of women with an ACE score ≥4 (n=10) had PreE while only 35.3% of women with a score ≤3 (n=68) developed the condition (P=0.01). As well, the odds of having PreE were higher in those with ACE scores ≥4, compared with those with scores ≤3 (OR= 7.34; 95% CI = 1.44, 37.33). In a subset of participants, scores were available from EPDS, survey that identifies women who have postpartum depression 6 weeks after birth, and from the PHQ-9, another assessment for depression. Among our participants, the average EPDS score was higher in women with PreE than women without PreE (6.38, n=21 vs. 3.71, n=42 P=0.01), indicating more severe symptoms of postpartum depression in women who also had PreE. In addition, the average PHQ-9 score among women with PreE was higher than that of women without PreE (3.71, n=15 vs 1.86, n=37 P=.02) with a higher score indicating more severe depression. The average PHQ-9 score was also higher in women who had ACE scores ≥4 than women with scores ≤3 (4.00, n=4 vs. 2.27, n=48 P=.01) indicating that women with more adverse childhood events were more likely to experience depression. Together, these findings indicate that PreE may be associated with adverse events during childhood as well as depression in late pregnancy and/or postpartum.


Author(s):  
E. Hitchcock Scott ◽  
George E. Muñoz

Emotional balance and stability are important aspects of long-term abstinence from non-prescribed mood altering chemicals. Labiality (extreme mood swings) can contribute to relapse. This chapter challenges the traditional concept of healing, defined as a return to prior levels of functioning. Adverse childhood experiences, with their long-term contribution to adolescent and adult mood problems are noted. Interventions for adverse childhood experiences are recommended as part of the healing journey for emotional wellness. The limitations of traditional addiction treatment are discussed, as well as various possible detractors to good emotional health and sobriety. Interventions, processes, and various counseling theoretical practices are suggested for improving mood, emotional well-being, and sobriety. Ongoing assessment and monitoring of emotional well-being and relapse risk are critical. The quality of the relationship between the practitioner and patient is crucial in order to co-create a viable, individualized, holistic treatment plan.


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