MaineHealth and our community partners are working together to reduce the impact of adverse childhood experiences on children in the communities we serve.
What are adverse childhood experiences?
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic experiences that happen during the first 18 years of life. One in four Maine children experience two or more ACEs in their home, community or school, such as:
- Exposure to addiction, violence or bullying
- Food insecurity and homelessness
- Abuse and neglect
- Death of a parent, parental separation or divorce
- Medical or mental illness
Children exposed to multiple ACEs can have higher rates of:
- Developmental delays and academic problems
- Anxiety, depression, or behavioral concerns
- Long-term health issues as adults
How can I help?
- Be Informed: Review the patient resources on this page so you can make an informed decision about next steps for your child.
- Ask for Help: Behavioral health treatments can reduce the negative effects of childhood trauma. Many MaineHealth medical practices offer access to behavioral health services right in the same office or close by. If you are concerned about your child, talk to your primary care or family medicine provider today.
Patient Resources
Resiliency
Reading Together
Parenting Through Challenges
Provider Resources
MaineHealth is committed to sharing ACEs knowledge and best practices across our health care system and beyond. Our goal is to help providers recognize and respond to all types of ACEs and trauma.
Realize. Recognize. Respond.
MaineHealth has created a free ACEs Toolkit for primary care offices serving children. The toolkit contains an overview of our program, recommended screening tools and screening schedule, workflows and quick start guides for the individual screening tools, recommendations for responding to adversity and building resilience and sample trauma informed language to utilize with patients and parents.
Additional videos:
- Adverse Childhood Experiences, Implications for the Health Care System: Maine Medical Center Grand Rounds
- How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime: TedMed, Nadine Burke Harris, MD
Several evidence-based trauma treatments have been shown to be successful in reducing the negative effects of childhood trauma and increasing resiliency in children. >Maine Behavioral Healthcare offers several trauma-related services for children (individually or with their parents or guardians) from on-the-scene volunteer crisis assistance to brief and long-term therapy programs such as:
- Child-Parent Psychotherapy
- Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
- Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention
Learn more about Maine Behavioral Healthcare.
Concerned about a patient who screened positive for ACEs?
MaineHealth behavioral health clinicians can help with:
- Assessment
- Further screening
- Treatment
- Community resources
- Individual and group therapy
- Family counseling
- Parent support
Learn more about medical/behavioral care integration at MaineHealth.
- Aces Too High
- The Amazing Brain: Trauma and the Potential for Healing
- American Academy of Pediatrics, The Resilience Project
- CDC/Kaiser ACE study, Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults
- Center for Child Stress & Health
- Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Centers for Disease Control Infographic – We Can Prevent Childhood Adversity
- The Center for Youth Wellness
- Childhood Adversity Narratives
- Futures Without Violence
- healthychildren.org
- National Center for Grieving Children and Families
- The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Toolkit for Healthcare Providers
- Note to Parents and Caregivers
- Sesame Street in Communities
- Treating Childhood Trauma: Oprah Winfrey reports on CBS on how trauma plays a role in childhood development and what new methods are being used to help kids who have experienced it.
The educational materials on this page may be displayed, copied, distributed or downloaded for personal or noncommercial uses, provided that such material is not altered or modified and that a reference to MaineHealth is provided.
The information shared on this page is intended to assist clinicians in standardizing the evaluation, diagnosis, and care of patients, with the goal of achieving optimal outcomes. The guidelines translate national recommendations and the best available evidence into local context.
Adherence to these guidelines should limit unwanted or unintended variation in practice, but guidelines are not meant to be prescriptive. The clinician retains the responsibility to select the appropriate guideline for a particular patient and to use the guideline to the extent that it serves the individual patient.
Any given approach must be carefully considered with each individual patient to ensure that an effective shared-decision-making process is in place, which reflects the patient's personal wishes, medical history, and family history.