What is Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) is a number given to medical patients to notate how many traumatic childhood experiences, such as physical or sexual abuse, parental divorce, familial addiction, and other similar factors affected their childhoods. Scientists were shocked to find that "the higher the ACE score, the worse the outcome on almost every measure from addictive behavior to chronic disease" (Page 10).