TDNet Discover

Background: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events individuals experience during childhood. ACEs can have many negative outcomes that have lasting impacts on an individual's health such as injury, poor mental health, poor maternal health, infectious disease, chronic disease, and risky behavior. As a clinician, it is important to be able to screen for ACEs and provide resources and interventions to mitigate the adverse health effects in these individuals. Unfortunately, there is not a current intervention guideline for clinicians to follow once they have identified a patient with ACEs. Resources and programs are available for preventing ACEs and identifying kids who may be at risk, but there is not much research done on intervention options to help those who already have ACEs. Purpose: This research sought to evaluate if the literature published since January 2018 provides stronger or higher quality evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for children, adolescents, and adults who have experienced ACEs. Methods: A systematic review was conducted by doing a comprehensive search of the literature through multiple database searches, including PubMed, EBSCO, Google Scholar, and South College Library, to identify research done from January 2018 to January 2023 of the highest level of evidence and quality. After the final studies were identified, reviewed, and selected, the studies were reviewed using both a data extraction and a quality assessment tool. Results: The final 4 studies selected included 2 randomized clinical trials, 1 systematic review, and 1 randomized feasibility study. The total patient population was 6,833. Study sample size ranged from 40 to 6,512. The different types of interventions looked at were developmentally v adapted cognitive processing therapy (D-CPT), dialectical behavior therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (DBT-PTSD), mental health treatment, substance use treatment, yoga meditation, trauma-specific treatment, sexual abuse-specific therapy, group process therapy, group psychoeducational therapy, systemic group psychotherapy, analytic group psychotherapy, object relation therapy and mindfulness based stress reduction for teens (MBSR-T). Conclusion: There was limited evidence to support interventions for people with ACEs in the literature published since 2018. The strongest evidence found supported CPT, and DBT for women who experienced child abuse. MBSR-T was found to be a feasible intervention in reduction of depressive symptoms, but its findings are limited to the lack of research on this intervention. Due to the limited evidence, the researchers cannot make recommendations for best treatment practices for individuals with ACEs. Further research still needs to be done that includes a larger and broader sample size, and a more inclusive definition of ACEs, in order to apply the research findings to the population at large.