Screen for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

ACEs are

childhood traumas such as; Sexual abuse, Physical abuse, Parent who is an alcoholic, Mother who is a domestic violence victim, etc.

If a person had experienced four adverse experiences, compared with people with zero ACEs, they had a 240 percent greater risk of hepatitis, were 390 percent more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema or chronic bronchitis), and a 240 percent higher risk of a sexually-transmitted disease. They were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, seven times more likely to be alcoholic, and 10 times more likely to have injected street drugs.

People with high ACE scores are more likely to be violent, to have more marriages, more broken bones, more drug prescriptions, more depression, more auto-immune diseases, and more work absences.

Research[1] shows that when "ACE Study questions relating to traumatic life experiences in childhood were added to the comprehensive medical history questionnaire that patients filled out at home. An analysis of 135,000 consecutive adults going through Health Appraisal in a 2.5-year period revealed that the addition of these trauma-oriented questions, with follow-up in the exam room produced a 35% reduction in outpatient visits and an 11% reduction in Emergency Department visits over the following year compared with that group’s prior year utilization. We realized that asking, initially via an inert mechanism with later follow up in the exam room, coupled with listening and implicitly accepting the person who had just shared his or her dark secrets, is a powerful form of doing."