Hi, friend! Following my previous post, your information about ACE is so fascinating! I wonder if you could give me more information? Such as how could I evaluate the client’s ACE experience?

Glad it helps!

Sounds great.

It's very simple. An individual’s ACE score is calculated based upon summing the occurrence of any given ACE which occurred at least once. No matter how frequently an individual may have experienced a particular early traumatic event (e.g. witnessing violence against their mother), they will only receive a “1” for that particular ACE if they were exposed to it at least once from birth to age 18. The number of different ACEs a given individual was exposed to is then summed so the potential ACE score ranges from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates the individual was never exposed to any of the potentially traumatic events while 10 indicates they were exposed to all of them at least once during their childhood to teenage years. As has been discussed, the ACE operationalization does not include the timing, frequency, duration, or severity of exposure to trauma, but it does enable researchers to assess the impact of cumulative exposure to a variety of traumatic events. This is important as ACEs are highly correlated to deleterious health and behavioral outcomes among both the general population and justice-involved youth in particular.