Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

AllanfromWales1 t1_ixyua8p wrote

So when asked a question from the ACE test such as:
> Did you often or very often feel that … a) No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special?

.. the response will be objective and not affected by the personality of the person answering?

4

OrcRampant t1_ixyv2ln wrote

I believed my parents loved me, even though my dad knocked me through the banisters. I thought I was important to them even though they never made me feel that way. The affects still exist.

For years I had difficulty in relationships because of how I was raised. Thinking I was raised normally didn’t save me from the side effects. Regardless of my answer, cortisol poisoning was still happening.

Scientific studies aren’t just a quiz and that’s it. The World Health Organization followed thousands of candidates over the course of 20 years before they published their study about ACEs.

36

AllanfromWales1 t1_ixyw72x wrote

OP's study, though, is based on answers to the ACE test, not on assessing participants' cortisol levels.

3

OrcRampant t1_ixyx14e wrote

My point is, whatever a person’s personality is does not determine the health affects of the adverse events. What you are referring to is under reporting, or normalizing trauma. That’s why these questions are asked in several ways and with different wording. The results aren’t unreliable.

13

AllanfromWales1 t1_ixyy7ct wrote

> That’s why these questions are asked in several ways and with different wording.

Not in the test I was looking at. They looked for different effects, but didn't repeat questions with different formulations to try to pick up issues which might have been passed over.

Yes, my concern is that normalised trauma may introduce a bias in the results. In particular, that the sort of people/families that may normalise trauma may well be the sort of people/families who would not identify PTSD and hence it would not be detected. This would appear in the records as people without detected trauma having a lower incidence rate of detected PTSD, as such introducing a bias in the results.

6

OrcRampant t1_ixyzrbu wrote

“Many previous studies observed that traumatic childhood events are linked to long-term adult diseases using the standard Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire.”

“…volunteer-based population health study in which each adult participant is invited to take a retrospective questionnaire that includes the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire…”

“Using participant’s cross-referenced electronic health records, a phenome-wide association analysis of 1,703 phenotypes and the incidence of ACEs examined links between traumatic events in childhood and adult disease.”

So, this is science. They have to be thorough. Also consider that the hypothetical person who has normalized trauma would not be volunteering to be in a study like this. All in all, I just think that means that there are likely more abuse victims out there than we know, but that really doesn’t affect a study like this.

9

[deleted] t1_iy0d5bp wrote

[removed]

1

Francie_Nolan1964 t1_iy0vf7v wrote

There's a lot of childhood trauma that's not included on ACEs such as death of a parent, being in foster care, terminal illness, significant car accident, etc. The authors only included the MOST common adverse childhood experiences.

5

BananaJammies t1_iy0dje0 wrote

Seems like that could fall under both “emotional neglect” and “mental illness in the household”, no?

1