acing the test

on the way home, i heard this story on NPR about the "ace" test, and of course i was like, whaaat?

turns out, this ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experience. well, that sounds like fun. who doesn't like a little adverse childhood experience to liven up the commute home? so i stayed tuned.

from 1995 through 1997, more than 17,000 adults had a standard physical exam and took the quiz. i'm sure they've had some dropout, die, etc., but the majority are being tracked right on through life. what the researchers have found is that there is a high correlation between adverse childhood experience and poor adult health.

they found that higher ACE scores correlated to higher alcoholism, depression, suicide attempts, smoking, sexual promiscuity, physical inactivity, and obesity.

i assume the value here is, now that the study is done, funding for prevention of ACEs can be sought. prevent the ACE, prevent the unhealthy adult. methods can be developed, tested, implemented. plus, unhealthy adults can perhaps be better served.

what i don't get about these sorts of studies is that they aren't telling us anything we didn't know. dysfunction breeds dysfunction. no shit.

what they need to do is a study on how many of us lived through ACEs and came through healthier. hell - i took the quiz, and without even digging, i racked up quite a few points. so what? who cares about ACE points? i am perfectly normal. i mean, what could be more normal than craving to run for miles and miles, all by myself?

there's some good info on the ACE here: http://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/. at the end of that page, there's something called the resilience questionnaire. i couldn't really tell exactly what is the purpose of that second questionnaire, but i could tell that it did nothing to increase my sense of confidence in my upbringing.