Link revealed between child abuse and harmful behaviour in adults
A new study reveals a link between adverse childhood experiences and health-harming behaviours in adulthood.
A new study reveals a link between adverse childhood experiences and health-harming behaviours in adulthood.
The survey of 3,885 English adults shows that a substantial proportion of people in England have experienced stressful events as children that have continued to affect their behaviour as adults.
These adverse childhood experiences include abuse as well as parental substance misuse, incarceration, and domestic violence.
The health-harming outcomes of these childhood experiences were:
- sex below the age of 16
- unintended teenage pregnancy
- smoking
- binge drinking
- drug use
- being a victim or perpetrator of violence
- going to prison
- poor diet
- low levels of physical exercise.
The authors suggest that almost half of adults in England have experienced one adverse experience during their childhood and roughly one in ten have experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences.
It highlights that improving the lives of children affected by these experiences in England could help reduce problem drug use and violence in adults by up to 50 percent, teenage pregnancies by 33 percent and reduce levels of binge drinking and smoking by around 15 percent.
The survey also notes that whilst adverse childhood experiences are linked with deprivation, they are by no means limited to poor communities and preventing them should be universal and proportionate to need.
The study’s lead author says: “Our results demonstrate that the absence of adverse childhood experiences is linked with resilience to commercial and cultural pressures to binge drink, smoke, abuse drugs, adopt poor diets, engage in early and unprotected sex, and become involved in violent and criminal behaviour.
“The importance of addressing adverse childhood experiences is often hidden, along with the voices of the children affected. Stable and protective childhoods are critical factors in the development of resilience to health-harming behaviours”.
Whatever your role with children, we all have a responsibility to be aware and vigilant to protect children from adverse childhood experiences.
Learn more about a range of duty of care and safeguarding topics by having a look at EduCare’s training catalogue.
*The study, Adverse Childhood Experience, is published in the open access journal BMC Medicine.
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