Goodsky is a personalised mental health retreat and outpatient program based in Australia. These self-assessment tools are provided to support personal reflection and understanding only and are not a substitute for professional diagnosis or treatment.
If your results raise concerns, or if you’re seeking deeper support, our multidisciplinary team works with individuals through private, one-to-one mental health retreats and outpatient care to address underlying causes and support long-term recovery.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Test is a valuable tool used to assess the impact of childhood trauma on long-term health and well-being. Developed through extensive research, the ACE Test consists of a series of 10 questions that explore various types of abuse, neglect and other potentially traumatic experiences that individuals may have faced during their formative years. The results of this test can provide crucial insights into how these early experiences may influence physical and mental health outcomes in adulthood.
By understanding your ACE score, you can gain a deeper awareness of the potential challenges you may face and take proactive steps towards improving your mental health and overall well-being. The ACE Test is a starting point for identifying areas that may benefit from further exploration and professional support.
Listen to Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk to get a better understanding of how childhood trauma can affect your health as an adult.
This test is based on the official Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente. It is designed to help you reflect on experiences during your childhood that may have impacted your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
The test will tally the number of your adverse childhood experiences. Your honest answers are important for understanding the extent of these experiences.
All responses are confidential. Completing the test can provide valuable insights into your past experiences and help guide you toward the most appropriate steps for supporting your mental health and overall well-being.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Test gives you a score between 0 and 10. Each point represents a different type of adversity you may have experienced before the age of 18 — including abuse, neglect, or household stress.
Your score isn’t a diagnosis. It simply reflects the number of categories of adversity, not the intensity or lasting effect.
• Score of 0: This suggests no reported experiences in the questionnaire’s categories—a common outcome for about 39% of adults. While it may indicate fewer early stressors, building resilience benefits everyone.
• Score of 1-3: Affecting around 45% of adults, this range reflects some early exposures. Studies link it to modestly higher associations with patterns like stress or mood challenges, which can often be well-supported through everyday habits and care.
• Score of 4 or higher: Seen in about 16% of adults, this indicates more experiences, with research showing stronger links to potential risks for conditions like depression (up to 12 times higher) or heart disease (doubled). The key insight? Protective factors like therapy and connections can reduce these risks by up to 78%.
Source: Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences Among U.S. Adults.
Your ACE score helps you understand potential connections between early life experiences and how your body and mind respond to stress today. But it doesn’t define your future — healing and recovery are always possible through the right support and evidence‑based care.
This interpretation of ACE score ranges (0–2, 3–6, 7–10) is adapted from the original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study by Felitti et al. (1998) and supported by decades of follow-up research highlighting the cumulative effects of childhood adversity on mental and physical health outcomes.*
If you’d like to talk to someone about your results, you can book a free phone consultation or contact us
— we’re here to support you.
The tables below are the results from a US ACE study, focusing on three categories of adverse experiences:
Participants were given an ACE score between 0 and 10 based on how many of these 10 types of adverse experiences they reported.
We understand that exploring your childhood experiences can be challenging, and we’re here to support you. Please leave your phone number and an experienced member of the Goodsky team will personally reach out to you.
Even if you decide that Goodsky isn’t the right fit, our extensive experience in mental health allows us to discuss other options and recommend additional support available to you.
At Goodsky, we recognise that early life experiences can have a lasting impact on the nervous system, emotional regulation, and long-term mental health. The ACE self-assessment is a widely recognised tool used to support understanding of how early stress and adversity may continue to influence wellbeing in adulthood.
This self-assessment is provided as part of Goodsky’s broader trauma-informed approach to mental health retreats and outpatient care.
Here’s how the ACE self-assessment may be used in the context of Goodsky’s programs:
Personal Reflection – The ACE questionnaire on this page can help you reflect on whether early life stress or adversity may be contributing to current emotional, psychological, or physical patterns. It is designed to support awareness — not to diagnose or label.
Understanding Root Causes – At Goodsky, we often work with individuals whose symptoms did not begin in adulthood. The ACE framework can help identify whether unresolved childhood stress may be an underlying factor worth exploring further.
Informing Individualised Care – For those considering a Goodsky mental health retreat or outpatient program, this type of assessment may help guide conversations about the most appropriate therapeutic support and care focus.
Supporting Long-Term Recovery – When early adversity is recognised and addressed within a safe, one-to-one therapeutic environment, it can support deeper nervous system regulation and long-term healing — rather than symptom management alone.
The ACE self-assessment is never used in isolation. At Goodsky, it sits within a whole-person, trauma-informed framework that prioritises safety, regulation, and personalised care — not scores or diagnoses.
The ACE Test, adverse childhood experiences test or childhood trauma test is a 10-question test that covers all levels of childhood adversities that range from neglect, abuse, family mental health and structure. It also covers abuse within the family and incarceration.
The aim of the test is to measure childhood experiences and how they affect you or your loved ones both now and as adults. The effects of adult mental health and poor physical health caused by adverse childhood events is staggering.
The ACE test is used to measure an individual’s exposure to adverse events as a child in the home and how it impacts their mental and physical health now or in the future. This test doesn’t take into consideration the positive impacts of good people and support in your life at the time (called positive childhood events or PCE) however, the evidence of adverse childhood events causing mental and physical health conditions for a lifetime is overwhelming.
The test available on this page (above) will provide you with a total score out of 10 upon completion.
You can complete the online test on any device. Once finished, your score and detailed information about your results will be sent to your email address.
There are 10 questions in the test and it can take up to 5 minutes to complete. However, it is different for everyone as some of the questions can be confronting and you shouldn’t be concerned if it takes a while to complete.
If you are having trouble with the questions then please take a break and come back to it if you feel you can.
Yes, your answers to the test are completely confidential. We take your privacy very seriously and ensure that all your responses are securely stored. Your information will not be shared with anyone else without your explicit consent. Your confidentiality and privacy is our top priority.
Some of the the experiences that lead to a higher ace score include:
Addressing one’s mental health problems begins with a thorough assessment. The ACE quiz is a crucial foundational tool because it helps reveal any early trauma that may have occurred.
At Goodsky, we view trauma as an injury that requires healing and understanding to prevent further harm. Childhood trauma, especially early childhood trauma, needs a different approach compared to trauma acquired in adulthood.
In a nutshell, the mainstream approach of CBT or talk therapy is top-down, where you use your mind to verbalize feelings. But what if the trauma was experienced before you had the ability to verbalize?
Even in cases of adult-acquired trauma, somatic therapy—a bottom-up approach where the body is used to heal the mind—can be incredibly valuable. While not as common in Australia, this approach is widely used overseas and is gaining popularity here due to its effectiveness. We find it extremely valuable and it is a key difference between our successful treatments and mainstream methods.
So, why take the ACE quiz? Because it will help reveal the extent to which your trauma (if any) was acquired in childhood, and may explain why mainstream CBT or top-down approaches haven’t worked for you.
Our primary approach to all mental health treatments begins with bottom-up or somatic therapy, focusing on the body first. Traditional talk therapy can be less effective when dealing with trauma, especially if the traumatic events occurred at a young age.
It is useful to consider whether the traumatic event or events happened in childhood. Of course we understand it can be both. As a visitor to the website we encourage you to complete PCL-5 form above, which assesses the extent to which past traumatic events affect you now, and we also recommend completing the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Test, which considers traumatic events that occurred in childhood.
For those diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, our PTSD retreat in Queensland on the Sunshine Coast is tailored to meet the individual needs of each patient. We treat trauma like an injury, offering a wide range of treatment options in a safe space. This approach helps each patient learn to cope with and heal from their trauma, regardless of how it was acquired. Below are a range of potential therapy options we might recommend to help overcome PTSD.
* Key Sources:
