Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resilience: Health Outcomes in Adolescents

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences, known as ACEs, have been shown to negatively impact an individual’s health as an adult. While efforts to decrease children’s exposure to these traumatic experiences are beneficial, they are not able to fully eliminate these experiences and do not address how to help children who have already been exposed. Resilience, which has been defined as managing and adapting to significant sources of trauma, has been thought to be a protective factor against the toxic stress of ACEs. While the relationship between ACEs and poor health outcomes has been established, the relationship between resilience and health outcomes is largely unknown. This study seeks to determine the association between resilience scores on a validated resilience questionnaire and health outcomes in adolescents. Looking specifically at body mass index, blood pressure, and depression scores on a validated depression screen we hypothesize that higher resilience scores will be associated with better health outcomes. In addition, we examine the relationship between ACE scores and resilience scores. If this validated resilience instrument is able to help predict health outcomes, this can direct development of intervention programs to build resilience in those living in ACE-heavy environments.