Sixty-three percent of Michigan’s high school students have experienced one or more adverse childhood experiences.

Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. Those events could refer to things like physical or emotional abuse and neglect, witnessing violence in the home or community, or having family members that struggle with mental illness or substance abuse.

Overall, children of color and girls experience higher exposure rates of adverse childhood experiences. When disaggregating the data by race, Black and Hispanic children experienced the highest rates of adverse childhood experiences, at 27% and 23%, respectively, in Michigan. In the United States, girls are almost double as likely to be exposed to multiple adverse childhood experiences in their first 18 years of life than boys.

The more adverse childhood experiences a child encounters, the higher their likelihood is to experience toxic stress and adverse outcomes in adulthood.

Toxic stress refers to the body’s response to lasting and serious stress, without support from caregivers.

Prolonged exposure to toxic stress wreaks havoc on the body and nervous system, leading to worse health outcomes like mental illness, substance abuse, and chronic diseases in adulthood.

In total, 15% of Michigan’s high school students reported having experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences.

You can see how children in your county are faring in regards to adverse childhood experiences with the Michigan ACE Data Dashboard here: miacedata.org.

Toxic stress negatively affects our emotional and physical well-being, spiking levels of the stress hormone cortisol and throwing us into “fight or flight” mode. When our bodies perceive danger, and that “fight or flight” mode is constantly being triggered, that leads to long-term wear and tear on our bodies and minds. As with cortisol, other physical functions can get stuck in high or low patterns as a part of our body’s survival mode, leading to symptoms of disease.

Though those outcomes may seem bleak, as someone who has experienced eight out of the 10 types of primary adverse childhood experiences, I can say there is hope about what we can do to eliminate their negative effects.

Cultivating emotional safety is one of the most important steps in healing the negative effects of adverse childhood experiences. To do that, children need a safe and stable adult to turn to in times of need.

In the Alpena, Montmorency, and Alcona counties area, of children who reported four or more adverse childhood experiences, only 23% reported they could ask their parents for help if they needed it. As we know, when children do not have a steady caregiver to count on, they are more likely to experience prolonged toxic stress. Parents or caregivers can create that safety by building connections with their children, encouraging and praising them, managing their reactions, and encouraging creativity and play time.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to prevent adverse childhood experiences from happening in the first place. Many times, adverse childhood experiences occur in families that have a hard time getting their basic physical needs met. Children need to be in stable environments and homes in order to reduce the amount of toxic stress they experience. That means making sure that parents and caregivers have access to necessities like child care, nutritious food, livable wages, health care, education, and adequate housing to start.

If parents do not have those physiological needs met, it will be harder to cultivate the second tier of emotional regulation skills. Even so, it is still difficult for many parents to access mental health care, especially in rural areas.

Presque Isle County had the worst rates of mental health providers in Northeast Michigan, at a ratio of 2,533 people to every one mental health provider.

Situations like those are dire, because the few mental health care workers that do exist in those areas are overwhelmed with the amount of work they are expected to take on, leading to burnout and less adequate care to patients.

We must take a multigenerational approach to healing.

Parenting is already a stressful job, and it helps for caregivers to have tools to help manage stress.

The Michigan League for Public Policy is calling on legislators to help prevent adverse childhood experiences from occurring by providing multi-year continuous coverage to kids and 12-month continuous coverage to adults enrolled in Medicaid and increasing funding for local public health services. That would mean increased access to mental health care, primary care and substance abuse services.

With the help of policies like those, we can continue to build resilience in our current, future, and inner children, so that they all may thrive.

Kelli Bowers is Kids Count data analyst at the Michigan League for Public Policy.