Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the retrospective prevalence of adverse childhood experiences, and their impacts on health and mental health problems among adults. A total of 1,954 males and females age 30 and older, residing in Metro Seoul or the suburbs of Seoul, participated in the online survey. Results indicate: First, 59.7% of the participants were exposed to at least one category of adverse childhood experiences. And, 16.3% of the participants had experienced four or more category of ACE. The most commonly reported manifestations of ACE were emotional neglect (31.3%) and emotional abuse (22.7%), followed by alcohol abuse (16.8%), domestic violence (16.1%), physical abuse (15.1%), and sexual abuse (14.6%). Thus, there are many persons who had experienced ACE during childhood in our study population. Second, logistic regression was applied to examine the association between ACE and adult health status. The analysis was controlled for impacts of demographic factors such as age, gender, educational attainment, economic state, marital status. The risks increased for each of the health risk behaviors, health worry, and chronic diseases studied as the number of exposure to ACE increased. Persons who had experienced four or more categories of ACE, compared to those who had experienced none, had 1.6, 1.7, and 6.8 times increased health risks for high-risk smoke, high-risk drink, and suicide attempts respectively; a 2.1 times increase in health worry; 2.0-2.3 times increased risk of chronic diseases including a serious illness(cancer, heart disease, stroke), digestive trouble, and pain-related disease. Third, there was a strong graded relationship between the number of exposures to ACE, and adult mental health. That is, the risk increased for mental disorders as the number of ACE increased. Compared to those who had no ACE, persons who had experienced four or more category of ACE had 6.4, 9.0, and 10.1 times the odds of depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms, respectively. The implications and limitations of these results are discussed as well as future research.