Adverse Childhood Experiences – IRP Poverty Dispatch

Massachusetts scores well on childhood trauma, but nearly 40 percent of children are still affected, By Dan Glaun, October 19, 2017, MassLive.com: “When children experience stressful or traumatic events, the effects can be long lasting and severe. Suicide attempts, alcohol and drug abuse, high risk sexual behaviors and criminal convictions are all more common among people who grew up with what researchers call ‘adverse childhood experiences,’ according to multiple studies. And according to a new analysis by the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 38.8 percent of Massachusetts children have had at least one ACE — well below the national average of 46 percent…”
More than 40 percent of Maryland children experience traumatic events, By Meredith Cohn, October 19, 2017, Baltimore Sun: “More than four out of 10 children in Maryland have experienced a traumatic event such as the death or incarceration of a parent, or a drug addiction or mental health problem of a family member, according to a new analysis of national data. Nationally, the so-called adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, were even more widespread with 46 percent of children reporting at least one, according to the analysis by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative done in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation…”