Aces Are Great in Poker but Challenging in Life
Part 4 of a Series: The Myth of Mental Illness and the Truth About Mental Health — A Man’s Journey to Freedom
You can check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series. It never occurred to me that my lifelong anger and depression, and later my two broken marriages, had anything to do with my childhood. All that changed in 1998 when I reached out to a colleague, Dr. Charles Whitfield, because I couldn’t seem to heal my depression even though I was receiving good therapy and was taking medications. He told me that the missing piece in my healing might be addressing childhood trauma.
Dr. Whitfield introduced me to the (ACEs) studies developed by Vincent Felitti, M.D., the head of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, and Dr. Robert Anda, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC.
The information the studies have provided us is not just helpful,
said Whitfield,
it is astounding.
He went on to describe the original studies and what they learned.
Drs. Felitti and Anda looked at 9,508 middle-class, middle-aged people in Southern California. All were members of Kaiser’s health…
