 New studies across the state are detecting a connection between substance abuse disorder and a phenomenon known as ACEs or adverse childhood experiences. Different types of ACEs can range from physical abuse to witnessing domestic violence at home. Westcare program director Anna Bevan shares more information on the subject. It can be substance abuse in the home. It can be child neglect. It can be food insecure. It can be homelessness. I mean there's so many things like something that would not be a social norm for a child would be an adverse childhood experience. And those things they believe have very big impact on brain development on children. So it affects them when they get adults. It affects them in their job. It affects them in their everyday life. Even substance use, mental health issues. Those things are caused by the adverse childhood experiences, the ACEs. Appalachian wireless just can't stop themselves. Westcare and their partners have the resources and people needed to help patients move past their trauma. The recovery process is different for everyone. We lean on a lot of other agencies at the same time because it should be person centered. No person's recovery process is the same. Nobody's going to be the same because they didn't have the same things in childhood. So we work with a lot of different agencies that help us with things that we can't provide here. We have a lot of referral sources that we send to. So if we can't help them, that's what we want to do because there's a lot of peaks and valleys in recovery and you really want to see this person succeed. So we want to give them every leg up in life that we can. And if that means referring them to somebody else, that's what we do. So we have so many referral sources. This is wonderful. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Colum.