A trusted adult refers to a grown-up in a child’s life who they can go to for support and guidance to discuss personal problems and issues they are facing openly.
This adult is someone with whom the child feels a strong bond, who they believe will listen without judgment, and who will provide caring advice to help them.
“While you were growing up, before the age of 18, was there an adult in your life who you could trust and talk to about any personal problems.”
Having this type of trusted adult relationship in childhood is considered a protective factor that contributes to resilience and ability to overcome adversity. Access to a trusted adult provides comfort, perspective, mentorship, and models healthy ways of coping when children face issues like abuse, neglect, or other trauma during vulnerable developmental periods.
Key Points
Rationale
Prior research has clearly demonstrated strong links between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) like abuse, household dysfunction and later mental health issues, chronic diseases, and early death (Felitti et al., 1998; Hughes et al., 2016).
Other studies also confirm relationships between ACEs and adopting health-harming behaviors (HHBs) like smoking, heavy drinking, and overeating that mediate these poor health outcomes (Campbell et al., 2016).
However, fewer studies have quantified resilience factors that may mitigate these long-term impacts from childhood adversity.
There is increasing recognition that building trusted relationships between children and caring adults promotes resilience and the capacity to overcome early trauma (Masten, 2014).
Establishing such evidence can inform policy and programmatic efforts to both prevent ACEs and foster greater resilience through strengthening supportive child-adult relationships.
Method
Measures
Sample
Analysis
Results
Summary
Individual health-harming behaviors (HHBs)
Multiple health-harming behaviours (≥2 HHBs)
Health-harming behaviors with lower mental well-being
Lower mental well-being (LMWB)
Insight
This study provides compelling population-level evidence that ACEs negatively impact mental and physical health over the lifespan.
However, always having trusted adult support in childhood could substantially mitigate these effects. For instance, the likelihood of having both poor lifestyle factors and mental health was 32 times higher for those with ≥4 ACEs lacking support compared to those with 0 ACEs who had support.
This highlights that preventing ACEs and building resilience are both critical to reduce the burden of poor mental wellbeing and chronic disease rooted in harmful health behaviors.
Strengths
Limitations
Clinical Implications
These robust findings should inform policies and programs to prevent ACEs and strengthen trusted child-adult relationships.
Parenting interventions, screening protocols in healthcare settings, and public health messaging are avenues to achieve this.
In turn, this can alleviate enormous suffering and costs related to mental illness, addiction, obesity, cancer and other chronic diseases stemming from childhood adversity.
Early bonding with caring adults might “convert” childhood toxic stress into more tolerable stress. This protects brain development and supports growth of coping abilities.
References
Primary reference
Bellis, M. A., Hardcastle, K., Ford, K., Hughes, K., Ashton, K., Quigg, Z., & Butler, N. (2017). Does continuous trusted adult support in childhood impart life-course resilience against adverse childhood experiences-a retrospective study on adult health-harming behaviours and mental well-being.BMC psychiatry,17(1), 1-12.
Other references
Bush, K., Kivlahan, D.R., McDonell, M.B., Fihn, S.D. & Bradley, K.A. (1998). The AUDIT alcohol consumption questions (AUDIT-C): An effective brief screening test for problem drinking.Archives of Internal Medicine, 158(16), 1789-1795.
Campbell, J. A., Walker, R. J., & Egede, L. E. (2016). Associations between adverse childhood experiences, high-risk behaviors, and morbidity in adulthood.American journal of preventive medicine, 50(3), 344-352.
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., … & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.American journal of preventive medicine, 14(4), 245-258.
Hughes, K., Lowey, H., Quigg, Z., & Bellis, M. A. (2016). Relationships between adverse childhood experiences and adult mental well-being: results from an English national household survey.BMC public health, 16(1), 1-11.
Masten, A. S. (2014). Global perspectives on resilience in children and youth.Child development, 85(1), 6-20.
Stewart-Brown, S., Tennant, A., Tennant, R., Platt, S., Parkinson, J. & Weich, S. (2009). Internal construct validity of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS): A Rasch analysis using data from the Scottish Health Education Population Survey.Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 7:15.
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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
