“The ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.”
Author of The Body Keeps the Score
ACE Childhood Trauma Test
Take the ACE test free.
Has past trauma been holding you back?
Do you ever feel like there's an invisible weight dragging you down? You may not even realize it, but unhealed childhood trauma can have a profound impact on your adult life, affecting everything from your relationships to your career.
The free Adverse Childhood Experiences Test (ACEs) will tell you how many of your childhood experiences may have been traumatic. If you've already taken the ACEs test and the results resonate with you, you're not alone. Millions of people carry the weight of past experiences. But there is hope.
At The Happiness Psychologist, we offer trauma-informed therapy with Dr. Diak, a warm and caring doctoral-level psychologist with years of training and experience.
Dr. Diak, a trauma-informed expert, can help you:
Understand how your past is impacting your present
Develop healthy coping mechanisms
Break free from negative patterns
Build resilience and self-compassion
Reclaim your power and live a fulfilling life
No matter how long ago the trauma occurred, Dr. Diak can help you move towards recovery and finding lasting peace.
Don't let your past define your future. Trauma therapy can empower you to heal and create the life you deserve.
Schedule a free consultation with Dr. Diak today and take the first step towards healing your past.
Join the thousands of people who have taken this test to learn which childhood experiences may be affecting their relationships and well-being.
Based on the landmark CDC-Kaiser study.
Childhood Trauma Test
Created by Dr. Frank Diak, licensed psychologist. Based on the questions from the CDC–Kaiser Permanente ACE Study.
Gain clarity on how your early life experiences influence your present well-being with our complimentary ACEs screening. This brief, confidential assessment helps you identify past hardships that may be contributing to your current struggles, offering valuable insight into the connection between your childhood history and your ongoing mental, emotional, and physical health.
The groundbreaking ACE test, developed through a collaboration between Kaiser Permanente and the CDC, revealed that adverse childhood experiences are significantly more common than previously understood. This landmark study established a clear correlation: individuals who faced a higher number of childhood challenges, as indicated by a higher ACE score, demonstrate a greater likelihood of experiencing mental and physical health difficulties in adulthood.
Please note that questions regarding childhood trauma may be sensitive or triggering. If you are concerned that revisiting these experiences could cause you distress, we recommend postponing this assessment until you can complete it with the support and guidance of a qualified mental health professional.
Your privacy is our priority. Your answers are stored solely to calculate your score; they are completely anonymous, remain unlinked to your identity, and are not used for any other purpose. Furthermore, this test does not collect or store your email address.
The results are for educational purposes only and are not a clinical diagnosis of trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder. A formal diagnosis can only be provided by a qualified mental health professional. If your results suggest that past experiences are impacting your life today, I encourage you to reach out to Dr. Diak, a licensed psychologist with specialized expertise in trauma-informed care.
After you complete the test download your free guide: Your ACE Score Explained: A Compassionate Guide to Understanding Your Results.
Understand which childhood experiences affect your relationships and well-being.
Free ACE Test
Takes 2 minutes | Completely confidential
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ACE Test FAQs
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Yes. The ACE test on this page is free, and you don’t need to sign up or give your email to see your score. It appears on screen as soon as you finish. If you’d like help understanding what your score means, the guide that goes with it is free too.
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The 10 ACE questions are the ones in the test on this page, the same questions used in the CDC–Kaiser Permanente ACE Study. Each asks whether you had a particular experience before age 18, such as abuse, neglect, or a parent struggling with addiction, and each “yes” adds one point to your score. Taking the free ACE test takes a few minutes and gives you your score right away.
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There’s no “normal” score, but there is a common one. Most adults have at least one ACE. In a CDC national survey, about 64% of U.S. adults reported one or more, and about 1 in 6 reported four or more. Researchers often use 4 or more as the point where health risks rise noticeably. Your score counts what happened to you. It doesn’t measure who you are or decide what’s possible from here. Your free ACE Score Guide explains what your particular score does and doesn’t mean.
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Researchers generally treat a score of 4 or more as high, so a 5, a 7, or a 9 all count. In large studies, higher scores are linked with more health and mental health struggles later in life. Those are patterns across many people, though, not a forecast for you. A high score means you went through a lot when you were young. It doesn’t decide where you go from here. Supportive relationships and good therapy help people at every score. Your free ACE Score Guide explains what a higher score means and what actually helps.
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The free ACE test asks about 10 kinds of adverse childhood experiences before age 18, drawn from the CDC–Kaiser Permanente ACE Study. They fall into three groups.
Abuse
Emotional abuse: a parent or other adult often insulted, humiliated, or threatened you, or made you afraid you’d be hurt.
Physical abuse: a parent or other adult hit, pushed, or hurt you.
Sexual abuse: an adult or someone much older touched you sexually or involved you in sexual activity.
Neglect
Emotional neglect: you often felt unloved or unimportant, or that your family didn’t look out for one another.
Physical neglect: you often went without enough food, clean clothes, medical care, or protection.
Household challenges
Violence in the home: you saw your mother or stepmother being hit, threatened, or hurt.
Substance use: you lived with someone who had a drinking or drug problem.
Mental illness: you lived with someone who was depressed, mentally ill, or attempted suicide.
Separation or divorce: your parents separated or divorced, or you lost a parent through abandonment.
Incarceration: someone in your household went to prison.
This list doesn’t include everything that can hurt a child. Bullying, community violence, serious accidents or medical procedures, foster care, poverty, discrimination, and the death of a parent aren’t on it, for example. If your experience isn’t here, that doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.
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The free ACE test on this page is a good place to start. It asks about 10 common kinds of childhood adversity and takes a few minutes. Many people also recognize their childhood most clearly in their present: in patterns that keep repeating in relationships, reactions that feel bigger than the moment, or a sense of always bracing for something. You don’t need to remember everything clearly, or have one dramatic event, for your experiences to have mattered. A trauma-informed therapist can help you put the pieces together at your own pace.
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Yes. The free ACE test doesn’t ask for your name or email, and your answers aren’t linked to you. Your score appears on screen as soon as you finish. If you choose to get the free ACE Score Guide afterward, that’s a separate step, and your test answers aren’t attached to your signup.
Learn about trauma & PTSD
Jessica’s Story: A trauma therapy experience
Jessica’s shares what it’s like to suffer from trauma, experience of therapy, and how therapy helped.
What type of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) do you have?
Learn the important differences between PTSD, Complex Trauma, Relational Trauma, and Childhood Trauma. Each type requires a different type of therapy.
Is your therapist trauma-informed?
If your therapist is not up to date on modern trauma treatment your therapy may not only not help, it may even make you worse. Is your therapist trauma-informed? How to tell.
Was your childhood traumatic? Free trauma test.
The ten common childhood events that may cause trauma for years afterward.
