Over 180 million American adults are dealing with unresolved childhood trauma—approximately 60% of the adult population.
Childhood trauma, often measured as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), is linked to adult health. A CDC survey of adults in 25 states found 63.9% reported at least one ACE and 17.3% reported four or more.
Landmark and subsequent studies show a pattern: higher ACE exposure is associated with greater risks of depression, substance use, and chronic disease, but it does not determine destiny. Research on positive childhood experiences suggests supportive relationships can buffer harm.
Experts say prevention and trauma-informed care—stable housing, parenting supports, and school mental-health services—can reduce long-term impacts, especially when help arrives early and consistently.
In the new book “Greater Than Gravity: How Childhood Trauma is Pulling Down Humanity,” the author Michael J. Menard’s documents how childhood trauma is the leading cause of addiction in America and is responsible for more addiction deaths than any other factor.
Trauma survivors frequently turn to substances like food, drugs or alcohol to regulate nervous systems that were damaged in childhood, to numb pain that never healed, to cope with emotions their brains never learned to manage.
Menard writes that childhood trauma damages the developing brain. When a child suffers chronic trauma and fear, especially within their own family, the brain's normal reaction to threats intensifies. The amygdala, which controls the fight-flight-freeze response, becomes hyperactive. This creates a nervous system that's hypersensitive to stress, that becomes dysregulated when triggered, that experiences overwhelming emotions the person never learned to manage.
In “Greater Than Gravity,” Menard calculated that childhood trauma costs America $14 trillion annually and causes 889 deaths every day—making it the third leading cause of death in the United States, ahead of accidents, respiratory disease, and stroke combined.
Many of those 889 daily deaths are obesity-related: heart disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers. We count them as separate epidemics. But they're branches of the same tree, rooted in childhood trauma that nobody treated.
The CDC reports that obesity-related conditions cost the U.S. healthcare system $173 billion annually. We're spending that money on medications, surgeries, and treatments for conditions that trace directly back to ACEs experienced decades ago.
However, Menard writes that there is good news: trauma is treatable.
Guest:
Michael Menard is the author of “Greater Than Gravity: How Childhood Trauma is Pulling Down Humanity.” He is the founder of United Against Childhood Trauma (UACT), a 501(c)(3) organization working to end childhood trauma as a public health crisis.
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This episode will be recorded on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, at 12:00 p.m.
