By Stephanie Covington Armstrong
When I was invited to deliver the Keynote Speech on Trauma, Food and the Body at the “9th” Annual SCTC Conference in October I immediately pinpointed my biggest area of trauma, sexual abuse. I wrote about my sexual abuse and how it contributed to me developing an eating disorder in my memoir so this was a no brainer for me. Then I began to create my power point presentation. I decided to revisit the ACES test, (adverse childhood experiences), that not only identifies trauma but also quantifies it and explains their long-term effects. The ACES breaks down trauma into three separate categories, Abuse, Neglect and Household dysfunction. The ACES test were the result of a study by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and Kaiser to help patients dealing with obesity. They discovered that when over 50% of patients reached their midway weight goal they would drop out of the program. Vincent Felitti of Kaiser and Robert Anda of the CDC surveyed the patients that led to them developing the ACES test.
The ACES study identifies ten childhood traumas - Abuse, is placed into three types, physical, verbal and sexual. Neglect, is separated into both physical and emotional. Then Household Dysfunction, is broken down into five components; an incarcerated parent, a mother who is the victim of domestic abuse, a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, a parent who abuses drugs or alcohol and the disappearance of a parent through divorce, death or abandonment. Each trauma accounts for one point and if your ACES score is 4 or higher then so is your toxic stress level, leading to depression, eating disorders, drug addiction and a myriad of health and emotional crisis.
Long before I felt the traumatic effects of other ACES, scarcity of food, and money reigned as the number one issue in my life. I looked forward to school because I would have lunch. My Eating Disorder has been affected as much by the stressors of not knowing when or how I would eat as my sexual abuse. I have never been homeless but when you straddle the poverty line like we did, often the most basic needs are sacrificed.
There is a marked difference between families that are poor and households that are food insecure because as I learned growing up not all poor families identify as food insecure.
Statistically rates of food insecurity were higher in households like mine.
· Households with children headed by a single woman (30.3 percent)
· Black, non-Hispanic households (21.5 percent),
· Low-income households with incomes below 185 percent of the poverty threshold (32.8 percent; the Federal poverty line was $24,036 for a family of four in 2015).
When I present my keynote on Trauma, Food & the Body, I will finally highlight the role Food Insecurity played in the development of my Eating Disorder because I know that I will not be alone.