According to a new meta-analysis , published by researchers at Unity Health Toronto, 90% of homeless adults experienced childhood trauma. And more than half have been exposed to four or more adverse childhood experiences .
Those exposed to four or more childhood traumas were 17 times more likely to have attempted suicide than those who had not experienced childhood trauma.
They are not determinative by themselves
The accumulation of toxic stress affects almost everything from our mental health to chronic diseases. We know that toxic stress can lead to disrupted brain development, with long-term consequences for learning, behavior, and overall social outcomes.
The researchers already thought that adverse childhood experiences in this population would be a problem, but to their surprise they found they were even more frequent than they expected. That the percentage is so high is truly shocking, and it is just one more evidence of how important adverse childhood experiences are that seem closely linked to homelessness and poor health.
But while adverse childhood experiences are important risk factors for homelessness, they are not determinants on their own. Other factors such as poverty, poor health and systemic racism are also important risk factors.
The data challenges the widely held narrative that homelessness is the culmination of a series of wrong individual choices . This is a population that is already suffering a lot in the present, and what the analysis did was confirm that many had also suffered a lot in the past.