Emily Cruz, Chloe Burkhart, Maizey Parriott, Emily Manos 

Sponsor or Client: 

Title:

Uncovering the Strength of the Evidence: A Meta-Analysis of Adverse Childhood Experiences and the Impact on Adolescent Depression

Abstract:

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to understand the strength of the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and the symptoms of depression in adolescence.
We conducted this meta-analysis because we have all experienced adversities during our childhoods that have impacted our mental health during our development.
The research literature was scoured by searching the EBSCOhost, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES. Web of Science, Google Scholar, and the Cline Library databases using the following keywords: adverse childhood experiences, depression, internalizing behaviors, adolescent, ACE, and correlational.
A small set of studies were obtained containing Pearson correlation coefficients, focused on the adolescent population, were conducted in the last five years, and written in the English language.
Descriptive statistics (i.e., Pearson r correlation coefficients for the relationship between adolescence and depression) were entered into a Meta-Essentials v1.4 (van Rhee et al., 2018) spreadsheet to calculate a summary effect weighted by sample size. A Forest plot was generated to display point estimates and confidence intervals for each study. The weighted average effect size will be discussed in relation to how it informs variability of estimates observed in previously published literature.