How childhood trauma impacts life outcomes

Learn about the correlations between childhood trauma and negative life outcomes...and why teachers should care.

This is the third post in a series on ACEs. See the first (HERE) and the second (HERE).

We know that adverse childhood experiences can lead to long-term effects, but the impacts of these experiences are more broad than most realize. We want to bring you a snippet of the wide array of research out there because we believe these statistics can help as you have conversations with others about the importance of trauma-informed care in schools. Knowledge brings opportunity.

After the publication of the original ACE study, many researchers published (and continue to publish) findings regarding life outcomes for people who experienced adverse childhood experiences. Here are some of the findings:

Gilbert et al. (2010) found that people with higher ACE scores were more likely to report myocardial infarction, asthma, poor health, frequent mental distress, disability, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Campbell et al. (2016) found that an ace score of four or more was associated with higher risk for alcohol abuse, smoking, risky HIV behavior, diabetes, myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease, stroke, depression, and disability caused by risky behavior.

In a study on youth offenders, Fox et al. (2015) found that doe every additional ACE experienced, the odds of becoming a serious, violent, chronic offender increases by 35%, even controlling for other important factors like “gender, race, age of onset, impulsivity, peer influence, and family income.”

Essentially, high ACE scores are linked with poor physical and mental health outcomes, risky behaviors, early mortality, and incarceration.

CAUTION: These correlations do not prove causation! We can only state that higher ACE scores are correlated with these outcomes, or that the risk of these outcomes is higher for people with higher ACE scores

As always, when you use a measure like this one, you will have outliers and anecdotal evidence to the contrary (e.g. “Well, my friend Ernie had every type of ACE imaginable and he is healthy as a horse, never got into any trouble, and never was depressed one day in his life.). These stories do not negate the statistical evidence of these increased risk factors.

Why should teachers care about this? Especially considering that many of these outcomes are health related--should this be just a topic for the medical field?

Teachers need to know about childhood trauma in order to care for the students who are the most vulnerable. Teachers will all teach a child at some point who has experienced trauma. ACEs are prevalent, with the majority of people in the original (massive) study having experienced at least one. (And they compare their reporting percentages with other wide scale studies that report similar percentages.) Learning about how trauma can impact someone in their future lives can help teachers develop more compassion and understanding for how to approach students today. And the most important factor is that there is hope for healing and growth and help for those who have experienced hard things!