Master Clinician Series: The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

The largest, most important public health study you never heard of.

Many believe that addiction is caused by mysterious properties that are essential in the molecular structure of certain chemicals. The changes in brain chemistry are absolutely real enough, but that’s not the primary cause. The primary causes are life experiences.

“I think the most important public health in current times would be to improve parenting skills across the country, which is really at the core of all of this.” ~Vincent Felitti, MD

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study was designed to answer two very simple questions:

1. Are these adverse childhood experiences at all common in a general population?
2. If so, how do they play out long-term?

In a 130,000 patient sample, the addition of 10 trauma-oriented questions to the general medical question was associated with a 35% reduction in doctor office visits in the next year compared to the prior year for that same group, and an 11% reduction in emergency department visits.

In this 1 hour video, Linda Curran, one of the most recognizable experts in the field of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and interviewee, Vincent Felitti, will illustrate the origins of the study, what was studied, and how successful it was.