Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include traumatic events that occur during childhood, such as physical or emotional abuse, poverty, or household dysfunction. They have been found to have profound negative effects on physical and mental health throughout the lifespan, including premature mortality. For instance, one study showed that adults who reported ACEs died, on average, 20 years earlier than those who didn’t experience ACEs. Mechanisms to explain why ACEs can lead to early mortality are unclear, however. This study looked at whether loneliness plays a role.
Almost 5000 adults from MIDUS were followed for 26 years. Measured included:
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs):
At the beginning of the study, participants reported whether they experienced 20 types of ACEs during childhood. The cumulative number of ACEs across these five categories was calculated:
- physical abuse- how often they had been shoved, slapped, kicked, hit, burned, etc.; by parents, siblings, or others
- emotional abuse- how often parents, siblings, or others insulted or swore at them, did or said something spiteful, smashed something in anger, or threatened to hit them
- poor health at age 16- self-reported physical and mental health
- disadvantaged socioeconomic status- whether their family was on welfare, if they had a parent who didn’t finish high school, or if they were financially worse off than other families
- adverse family structure- whether there was a father figure at home, whether their parents were divorced or deceased.
Loneliness: About 10 years later (2004-2006), participants reported how often they had felt lonely during the last 30 days.
Mortality data: was available through 2021.
Results showed that:
- Adverse childhood experiences were significant predictors of mortality risk.
- Loneliness was a significant mediator of this association: this means that higher ACEs were associated with higher levels of loneliness in adulthood, which in turn, resulted in increased mortality risk.
- Once loneliness was taken into account, ACEs no longer had a direct significant effect on mortality, indicating that loneliness in adulthood accounted for the relation between ACEs and future death.
More research is needed to confirm these results, including with measures of sexual abuse and emotional neglect, which were not part of this study. In addition, adversity often continues beyond childhood, and loneliness may change throughout the life course, neither of which were taken into account. Loneliness should also be measured with more than one question, as overall levels of loneliness were low among these MIDUS participants and different results may occur among groups who report more loneliness.
Overall, this study highlights the importance of considering loneliness among those who had troubled childhoods. Childhood adversity may lead to an inability to form and maintain relationships in adulthood, creating feelings of loneliness that could affect mortality via underlying behavioral or biological processes. If these results are replicated in other studies, interventions that address loneliness may reduce mortality among those who experienced adverse childhood events.
Source: Curtis, A., Kirwan, E. M., Luchetti, M., Creaven, A.-M., Turiano, N., McGeehan, M., . . . O’Súilleabháin, P. S. (2025). Loneliness links adverse childhood experiences to mortality risk across 26 years. Journals of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 80(6), Article gbaf016. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbaf016
Read the full article at: https://midus.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/3036.pdf