Not all the news about youth mental health was terrible in 2023.
Last week, JAMA Psychiatry published a study with promising outcomes about ways in which we can reduce the negative impact of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, on our youth.
ACEs is a cluster of well-studied forms of childhood maltreatment and family dysfunction.
The new study is different than others in that researchers followed a group of children into young adulthood, tracking exposure to ACEs and potential resilience factors in real time. Prior studies collected information from adults who relied on their memories of childhood.
Authors looked for resilience factors that might lower the likelihood that youth exposed to ACEs later develop feelings of high stress, depression or anxiety, or a substance use disorder in early adulthood.
Indeed, they found that three categories of social bonds during childhood were associated with lower perceived stress:
- Maternal warmth
- Parent-child relationship
- Non-parental adult support
Additionally, authors found that children who had a positive parent-child relationship or non-parental support were less likely to develop anxiety or depression in young adulthood.
This is great news because now there is data to support the existence of resilience factors that can mitigate the toxic effects of exposure to ACEs.
There are two sides of the childhood trauma ledger:
- Risk factors (ACEs)
- Resilience factors (social bonds)
Understanding the therapeutic potential of healthy social bonds with adults in- and outside of the family can help frontline clinicians and policymakers.
Prevention of ACEs is, of course, the most powerful intervention. I hope that this is the first of many studies that teach us how to quickly counteract the burden of ACEs on physical and mental health among the children and families we serve.
Below are links to the new study and to the CDC’s ACEs webpage in the comments below.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/about.html
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2813435
