Today's "Member Minute" came courtesy of John Suzukida. John was born in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from the University of Illinois in Mechanical Engineering. He worked for more than 20 years for Trane, which ultimately transferred him to the Twin Cities. For the past 19 years he has worked as an independent consultant but has gradually been scaling back and is currently mostly retired. In addition to his many years with our Rotary Club, John has become an active volunteer with a number of other organizations that he and his wife Lori support. They are the parents of 3 adult children and have several grandchildren they are totally smitten with. Those grandchildren and their parents will soon be relocating from Boston to the Twin Cities to the delight of Grandma and Grandpa!
Today's program was on the subject of "Adverse Childhood Experience" (ACE). We viewed a video in which Dr. Vincent Felitti spoke about the very significant impact that childhood trauma, or ACE, has on individuals throughout their lives. Research has shown that depression, suicide, promiscuity and all number of adult troubles can be traced back to childhood trauma, as ACE scores have a very high correlation with these problems, making it our nation's most basic health issue. So what can be done? Felitti argues that medical professionals should move away from the current "symptom reactive" approach to treating patients and add more research into patients' family background to understand possible underlying trauma.