A Review Paper on Adverse Childhood Experiences and Its Relation with Coping Strategies

Abstract

The review paper aims to understand how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affects all facets of life, not excluding the way people handle their stressors in general. Although unhealthy coping consisting of maladaptive strategies provide relief for short time, can worsen the problem in the long-run, affecting the mental health in negative manner; healthy coping which involves adaptive strategies improve the wellbeing of individuals. So, it is important to understand how ACEs impact coping strategies (CS), considering the major role CS play in the healing process. However, studies exploring the relation between ACEs and coping strategies (CS) are limited. Review of the existing literature discussed that there is a positive association between ACEs and maladaptive coping, maladaptive coping mediates ACEs to mental health issues, and that the use of voluntary adaptive coping may mitigate the negative effects of ACEs. In conclusion, the development of interventions is emphasized to improve adaptive coping in individuals to lessen the use of maladaptive coping, as well as for buffering the potential negative impact of ACEs. The need for further investigation on the connection between childhood adversity and the development of coping strategies in adulthood is also highlighted at the end.