An ecological expansion of the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) framework to include threat and deprivation associated with U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices: An examination of the Latinx immigrant experience ☆

Social science & medicine (1982) · 5 authors, 5 centres

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TL;DR

This conceptual article proposes expanding the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework to include immigration-related threat and deprivation as systemic adversities for Latinx children in immigrant families. The central argument is that this expansion is necessary for accurate clinical assessment and developmental science.

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This narrative review integrates ecological and dimensional models of childhood adversity to argue for expanding the ACEs framework. The authors synthesize existing literature to highlight how these factors, synergistic with other traumas, can impact developmental outcomes. They conclude with a discussion on the practical and ethical implications for screening and assessment in clinical and research settings.

STUDY TYPE

narrative_review

SPECIALTY

psychiatry

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ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10409596

An ecological expansion of the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) framework to include threat and deprivation associated with U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices: An examination of the Latinx immigrant experience ☆

Social science & medicine (1982)

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ABSTRACT

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework has contributed to advances in developmental science by examining the interdependent and cumulative nature of adverse childhood environmental exposures on life trajectories. Missing from the ACEs framework, however, is the role of pervasive and systematic oppression that afflicts certain racialized groups and that leads to persistent threat and deprivation. In the case of children from immigrant parents, the consequence of a limited ACEs framework is that clinicians and researchers fail to address the psychological violence inflicted on children from increasingly restrictive immigration policies, ramped up immigration enforcement, and national anti-immigration rhetoric. Drawing on the literature with Latinx children, the objective of this conceptual article is to integrate the ecological model with the dimensional model of childhood adversity and psychopathology to highlight how direct experience of detention and deportation, threat of detention and deportation, and exposure to systemic marginalization and deprivation are adverse experiences for many Latinx children in immigrant families. This article highlights that to reduce bias and improve developmental science and practice with immigrants and with U.S.-born children of immigrants, there must be an inclusion of immigration-related threat and deprivation into the ACEs framework. We conclude with a practical and ethical discussion of screening and assessing ACEs in clinical and research settings, using an expanded ecological framework that includes immigration-related threat and deprivation.

CITATION EXPORT

R. Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez, Cecilia Ayón, Kalina Brabeck et al.. An ecological expansion of the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) framework to include threat and deprivation associated with U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices: An examination of the Latinx immigrant experience☆. Social science & medicine (1982). (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114126

AUTHORS

5 · 5 CENTRES

R. Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez, Cecilia Ayón, Kalina Brabeck, Lisseth Rojas-Flores, Carmen R. Valdez

aDepartment of Population Health, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, USA
bSchool of Public Policy, University of California, Riverside, USA
cDepartment of Counseling, Educational Leadership and School Psychology, Rhode Island College, USA
dDepartment of Clinical Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA
eDepartment of Population Health and Steve Hicks School of Social Work, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, USA