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Education Suffers After Even A Single Brush With Childhood Trauma

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on June 26, 2025.

THURSDAY, June 26, 2025 — Violence, addiction and abuse can keep children a step behind other kids when it comes to their education, a new study says.

Children who’ve experienced only a single traumatic event are more than twice as likely to be chronically absent from school due to health problems, researchers reported in the journal Academic Pediatrics.

And the more adverse events a child endures, the higher the odds they’ll miss more school, researchers add.

“This study reinforces what pediatricians have long known: that kids exposed to adversity often show up in the clinic and the classroom with complex challenges,” lead researcher Dr. Rebecca Tsevat, a pediatrician and general internist at UCLA Health, said in a news release.

Adverse childhood experiences already have been associated with lifetime health problems like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, sexually transmitted infections and suicide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The toxic stress caused by these experiences can affect a child’s brain development and immune response, making them vulnerable to a host of physical and mental health problems, the CDC says.

For this new study, researchers analyzed data from parents of more than 10,000 children 6 to 17 collected by the 2021-2022 National Health Interview Survey, a regular poll conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

About 1 in 4 (24%) of these children had been exposed at least one adverse childhood event, including:

• Violence

• An incarcerated parent

• A mentally ill, drug addicted or alcoholic member of their household

• Verbal or emotional abuse

• A lack of basic needs like food or housing

• Discrimination based on their race or ethnicity

Kids exposed to these traumas were 2.4 times more likely to be chronically absent from school, missing at least 10% of school days due to health reasons, results show.

And for each additional traumatic event they endured, their risk of health-related chronic absenteeism rose by 25%, researchers found.

The traumatic events most strongly related to missing school included:

• Exposure to violence, which was associated with 2.6 times higher odds of chronic absenteeism.

• Discrimination, which increased chronic absenteeism risk by 2.5 times.

• Living with a mentally ill person, which increased risk 2.2 times.

The results suggest that pediatricians and educators should work together to identify kids who’ve been exposed to trauma and provide them early support, especially if they start missing school, researchers said.

“We need new models of collaboration between schools and healthcare systems to support these students before they miss too much school and experience worse health and educational outcomes as a result,” Tsevat said.

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted June 2025

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