This master's thesis studies the connection between an individual's adverse childhood experience (ACE) and the decision to pursue a helping career. Authors have been researching the impact of far-reaching effects of ACE since 1997 and the first Slovenian study of its kind was conducted in 2019. In the theoretical introduction the paper first presents the concepts of the originial and Slovenian ACE study and explains some concerns and criticisms of ACE studies. This is followed by an overview of relevant professional theories, and the demarcation of internal and external motives, which we assume to subconsciously or consciously influence the decision to pursue a profession. The purpose of the empirical research is to check whether there are differences between students of social pedagogy (hereinafter SP) and students of pharmacy in the motives for deciding on their studies and the differences between their assessment of ACE. The master's thesis reveals the occurrence of ACE in an individual group of students, and the correlation between the assessment of ACE and the motives for choosing a profession. Furthermore, we deepen this with the providers of care and helping professions, where we are interested in their views on the decision for their profession, in connection with their assessment of the ACE and cooping with stressful situations at work. In order to better understand the studied issues, we used a combined approach with quantitative and qualitative methodology. The sample includes a total of 152 female students (81 social pedagogy students and 71 pharmacy students) and five professionals working in the field of procedural (three social pedagogues) and crisis (firefighter and rescuer) interventions. The findings show that SP students have a higher ACE score and decide to a greater extent for their profession based on their internal motives. Both groups of female students also differ in the motives that contribute to the decision to pursue their profession. SP students put greater importance to motives, such as: social orientation, empathy, personal satisfaction, joy to work, contribution to society and the desire to care for others, while for pharmacy students’ motives are, that they enjoy their work, are more science-oriented, want to work on themselves and help society. The correlation between the ACE score and the internal motive of researching and solving one's personal problems was confirmed in the group of SP students. We perceived positive feelings (and feedback) when providing help, an ambivalent form of attachment, childhood experiences and mentors during adolescence as motives important in deciding on the profession of our interviewees. As extremely important in dealing with stress, in addition of support of the team and good relations, we also perceived longer years of service.
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