Commentary: Resiliency in the face of ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ [CantonRep.com]

By James Molnar / Janice Houchins / Michael L. Howard / Mike Johnson / Members, Stark County Family Council Trauma & Resiliency Initiative

Charita Goshay’s April 5 article “Did childhood help lead a man to murder?” evokes thoughts of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs.

Many of us have at least one ACE, events we were around or witnessed in our youth.

The 10 ACEs are: substance abuse, parental separation/divorce, mental illness, battered mother, criminal behavior, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect.

Many of us, too, have more than one.

In the mid-1990s, Vincent Felitti, head of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventative Medicine in San Diego, and Robert Anda, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, surveyed more than 17,000 Kaiser Permanente volunteer patients. This survey, titled Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, consisted of 10 questions ranging from substance abuse to physical neglect.

[For more go to http://www.cantonrep.com/opini...hildhood-experiences]