Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
The study of ACEs involves investigating things such as abuse, neglect, or living with a parent with a mental illness. Dr. Harris (2015) encourages paying attention to this study because it is among the leading causes of death. This is because ACEs negatively affect the immune system, brain development, and hormonal system, as well as how human DNA is read and transcribed. If experienced in high doses, it results in lung cancer, heart disease, and reduced life experience. This study is important to improve health outcomes because a doctor needs to go beyond the illness and find out the cause of the increased rate of illness rather than prescribing doses to treat the illness.
What surprised me is how ACEs affect more people than expected. I was also appalled by the fact that professionals have not seen ACE as the root cause of the illnesses that they are trying to treat. It is expected that professionals evaluate the underlying issues before addressing the real problem, as Dr. Harris (2015) has highlighted. According to her research, professionals have not given ACE study the seriousness it deserves. I believe that focusing on the ACE study would enhance health outcomes because this takes a preventive approach.
Human services professionals should learn about ACEs because ACEs assist in creating a history that would help the professionals to properly diagnose clients and thus lead to a well-informed practice and diagnosis. As Stevens (2022) noted, research has shown that ACEs are the main cause of many mental, physical, social, and economic issues humans face. Therefore, it would be ignorant and myopic of human services professionals to downplay these factors as they serve their clients.
ACEs can be a helpful lens in viewing clients’ actions by rapidly showing the professionals which clients are at the lowest risks and who are at the highest risk for stress and other behaviors. CDC (2022) writes that traumatic experiences in adolescence and childhood may expose children to the risk of substance abuse, mental illness, and chronic health issues. ACEs take many forms, such as having a member in a family who died by suicide or attempted suicide, witnessing violence, and experiencing neglect, abuse, or violence. Therefore, human services professionals are likely to predict the behavior patterns of their clients based on these experiences.
A history of adverse experiences during childhood might continue to cause problems for a person throughout their lifespan since early experiences are believed to shape children’s beliefs of themselves, other people, and the outside world. As Dr. Harris (2015) argues, children’s first encounters are usually with parents and their immediate environment, and they learn everything from this environment. If parents also pass their adverse experiences on to their children, the children learn the rules that would protect their beliefs, whether they are toxic or not. This results in dysfunctional behaviors that can further lead to mental issues. Also, Dr. Harris (2015) posits that stress resulting from ACEs may alter brain development and influence how the human body reacts to stress, even in adulthood.
As explained by Dr. Harris (2015), continuous stress prompts the adrenal glands to release stress hormones that affect the immune system, thus leading to more health issues in adulthood. Knowing what I know now makes me want to be more empathetic, kind, and nonjudgmental to clients because I now understand that everyone has a story that has impacted their lives.
ACEs in childhood may make it difficult for an adult in crisis to cope with challenges and stress. According to the CDC (2022), ACEs as a child influence how children respond to stress, resulting in sustainable changes in their bodies and brains. This makes it even harder for an adult to respond to stress positively because effective brain functionality is already tampered with. Based on this information, I would, therefore, be more objective about handling people experiencing a crisis by being more empathetic towards them and trying to engage them in a well-informed diagnosis rather than merely suggesting a solution to their crisis.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention- CDC (2022). Help Youth at Risk for ACEs. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/help-youth-at-risk.html
Harris, N.B. (2015). How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXXTLf7oouU
Stevens, J.E. (2022). Aces are too high! News. https://acestoohigh.com/
ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE
We’ll write everything from scratch
Question 
Why do you think human service professionals should learn about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?
How can ACEs be a helpful “lens” through which to view clients’ actions?
Why do you think a history of adverse experiences in childhood might continue to cause problems for a person throughout their lifespan?
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Why do you think adverse experiences increase the risk for so many types of problems?
How does knowing what you now know about ACEs change the way you may look at a client?
How do you think ACEs in childhood may impact an adult experiencing a crisis?
How will this information change the way you respond to people experiencing a crisis?