What if you were told that answering 10 yes-or-no questions about your childhood could determine your vulnerability to disease and mental illness long before you develop any symptoms?

No, it’s not a crystal ball. Your answers to the 10 questions determine your adverse childhood experience (ACE) score. Dr. Vincent Felitti of the University of California, San Diego, did much of the research for the ACE score and believes this screening tool should be part of every physical exam, according to this NPR article.

These 10 questions ask about experiences that occurred before a patient’s 18th birthday*:

1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often swear at you, insult you, put you down, humiliate you, or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?

2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often push, grab, slap, throw something at you, or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

3. Did an adult or person at least five years older than you ever touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?

4. Did you often feel no one in your family loved you or thought you weren’t important or special?

5. Did you often feel that you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?

6. Was a biological parent lost to you through divorce, death, abandonment or other reason?

7. Was your mother or stepmother often threatened or physically abused?

8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker, alcoholic or who used street drugs?

9. Did you live with anyone who was depressed, mentally ill or who had attempted suicide?

10. Did a household member go to prison?

*Credit: Danny Deblius/NPR

During an appointment with Felitti, Bonnie Ratliff, a mother of two in her 30s, answered these ACE questions and completed a medical history form. She answered yes to 4 out of the 10 questions, revealing how difficult it was to keep her mother’s drinking, hoarding and nervous breakdown a secret. Ratliff also shared that she had been molested as a kid. Felitti reviewed her medical history and Ratliff showed issues with irregular heartbeat, weight gain, allergies and an eye problem.

Felitti asked Ratliff how she felt her adverse childhood experiences had affected her.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking about how my childhood experiences have turned me into the person I am, how I still carry them with me. I haven’t necessarily connected it, for the most part, to physical issues before this.” -Bonnie Ratliff 

Felitti believes that asking patients about adverse childhood experiences helps doctors understand how to help and patients understand their health more deeply.

Click here to read the entire article from NPR, or learn more about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.