From KQED: Childhood Trauma Can Mean Early Death. This California Mom Wants to Beat the Odds by Laura Klivans and Anne Wernikoff
"Emotional neglect, physical abuse, divorce, a household riven by addiction — science shows that traumas like these in childhood cause poorer health later in life, both mentally and physically.
The first research was conducted in the late 1990s and recently popularized by San Francisco pediatrician and author Nadine Burke Harris. Doctors behind the first study dubbed these childhood traumas “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs, and devised a measurement scale: For each negative experience a person had, his or her “ACE score” would go up by 1 point.
A person with four or more ACEs has more than five times the risk of depression, four times the risk for chronic lung disease and double the risk for cancer. An ACE score of six or more shortens life expectancy by 20 years on average.
Sabrina Hanes lives with her 4-year-old daughter, Aroara, in Paradise, California, a small Butte County town set among pine and oak trees. Sabrina is 33 now, but her youth was rife with pain, and her ACE score is 8 out of 10.
When she was that age, Sabrina often had to fend for herself, which left her vulnerable to abuse. She is committed to giving Aroara a different experience. "
