Joining the Dots
The medical profession was trained to treat biology, not biography, he was told. Childhood experiences, many believed, had no place in an adult medical record. Undeterred, Anda and Felitti turned to epidemiology and mathematics, launching the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. Thousands of patients were asked whether, before the age of eighteen, they had experienced any of ten categories of adversity, and, if so, which. The defined categories were as follows: physical, sexual, or emotional abuse; physical or emotional neglect; domestic violence; substance abuse or mental illness in the household; parental separation or divorce; or the incarceration of a household member…
