A common metric is the ACE test. Consider how many ACEs a child has experienced, over what time periods they occurred, and how their family responded to them. A child with many ACEs and a family that didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t respond to these experiences is worse off than a kid whose family immediately took corrective action, generally.
>Abuse includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in childhood. Household dysfunction includes growing up with domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness in the home, parental divorce or separation, and incarceration.
The other thing that tends to go unnoticed is that many people at a very young age experience the death of a dear loved one they were deeply bonded with. This can have profound and unimaginable effects on the stability of their psychology in ways that are poorly understood. It’s very possible for ones own internal primitive neural structures to permanently throw themselves completely out of chemical balance through self inflicted damage through stress mechanisms caused by the activity of these structure.
The reason this is possible is because the most physiologically potent aspects of the limbic system develop well before the prefrontal and other more modern structures can completely solidify. Because these structures are grow slower and are more elaborate, the homeostasis necessary for their stable growth is much more delicate.
There are likely periods of chemical vulnerability during development that can act as transformation pathways of the entire development of the advanced structures. They will continue to express their growth/maturation genes and develop in some way but it leads to a completely different operational configuration and also one that relies heavily on conceptual and even chemical aspects of the external environment for internal conceptual and chemical stability.
The one of the main functions of limbic system is the main component in the fear/flight/fright mechanism. This system exists because its operation of generating chaotic action and bias of reaction has in some way granted its host a significant increased statistical advantage toward surviving and reproducing whereas, although it can make a big difference, the more advanced structures have not adapted the capability of continued existence as a species on its own.
Natural selection favors whatever social genetic traits confer an increased rate of survival of an organism to reproductive maturity and then what personally governing traits lead the individual to reproduce. It is fair to presume that all traits of the human mind developed completely for only two purposes, to reproduce and to behave in ways that ensure your offsprings survival which unintentionally contributes to widespread survival advantage of humans outside ones family, increasing the chances that there will be similar individuals to confer a symmetrical advantage in return. Pretty much a cloud of increased likelihood for the species as a whole in that area to survive. Pretty much everything we think is important in society can be traced down the bias in the limbic systems chaos system
If you only had that, then you have a low ACE score, which reduces the risk for all, compared to someone with a higher ACE score, as that paper explains.
>A traumatic experience in a person’s life occurring before theageof18thatthepersonrecallsasanadult.
The ACE score is a measure of cumulative exposure to particular adverse childhood conditions. Exposure to any single ACE condition is counted as one point. Points are then totaled for a final ACE score. It is important to note that the ACE score does not capture the frequency or severity of any given ACE in a person’s life, focusing instead on the number of ACE categories experienced. In addition, the ACE categories used in the ACE study reflect only a select list of experiences
>Note: two categories from the original ACE study, physical and emotional neglect, were not included in the BRFSS survey. In addition, drug and alcohol use by someone living in the home were counted as separate ACEs in the Minnesota BRFSS analysis and not combined into one as in the BRFSS analyses conducted in other state
From page 13
>This study confirms that a majority of Minnesotans are experiencing ACEs in childhood. As in other states, ACEs tend to occur together. This study also confirms that there is an association between the number of ACEs and health and social outcomes so that the more ACEs a person has the greater the effect on physical
and mental health and social well-being.
>Table 1 shows the distribution of ACE scores for all Minnesotans and by gender. Table 1 indicates that 21 percent of Minnesotans reported three or more ACEs and 8 percent reported five or more ACEs.
>Consistent with other states’ results, women experience even greater numbers of ACEs. In Minnesota, 57 percent of women and 54 percent of men reported experiencing one or more ACE in childhood. Almost a quarter of women (24 percent) reported experiencing three or more ACEs in childhood compared to 19 percent of men.
> ACEsalsotendtooccurtogether,meaning that those Minnesotans reporting one ACE are more likely to report other ACEs. This is consistent with the ACE findings from other states. Table 2 illustrates that of the 55 percent of Minnesota adults with one ACE, 40 percent have one ACE and 60 percent have two or more ACEs. This graph also shows that among those having at least one ACE, 15 percent have five or more ACEs.
>Table3showstheprevalence
of each ACE among Minnesota adults. The three most common ACEs reported by Minnesota adults include emotional abuse with 28 percent of Minnesotans indicating that a parent or adult in their home swore, insulted or put them down in their youth; living with a problem drinker or alcoholic (24 percent); and separation or divorce of
a parent (21 percent).
> The results from the Minnesota Student Survey show that differences among racial/ethnic groups have
been very consistent over the last 15 years. In every year the survey has been administered since 1995, African American, American Indian and Hispanic 9th graders have been at least twice as likely as White students to report
three or more kinds of adverse experiences. In every year, Asian students have been slightly more likely than White students to report three or more adverse experiences.
The pdf is quite short and uses plain language. I encourage anyone interested to read it in full.
>Abuse includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in childhood. Household dysfunction includes growing up with domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness in the home, parental divorce or separation, and incarceration.
https://www.health.state.mn.us/docs/communities/ace/acerepor... (PDF)