Adverse childhood experiences statistics worldwide

Updated October 2026

Adverse childhood experiences, often shortened to ACEs, are stressful or traumatic events before adulthood: abuse, neglect, and growing up with violence, a parent's mental illness or substance use, or separation from a parent. Many people carry these experiences without anyone knowing.

A meta-analysis combines the results of many studies into one figure. One such review, in World Psychiatry, pooled studies of adults, most of them from North America, and found that 16.1% reported four or more ACEs ¹. Its figures speak most clearly about that region. Adverse childhood experiences are common, and many adults report more than one. The key figures below show how many, from that review ¹ and from national surveys.

Counting ACEs depends on the questions asked. Some surveys use a list of about ten experiences, others thirteen or more, and some ask only about abuse. A person's score is the number of different kinds they report, not how severe each one was.

Reading about childhood adversity can stir up difficult memories. If it does, support is available; our list of helplines and crisis lines worldwide covers many countries.

Getting help

If something on this page reflects what you are going through, you do not have to manage it alone. Our guide to finding the right therapist explains how to choose someone qualified, and the TherapyRoute directory lists therapists in many countries.

If you are in crisis or thinking about suicide, our list of helplines and crisis lines worldwide gives free services by country. In an emergency, call your local emergency number.

How common adverse childhood experiences are

The World Health Organization's World Mental Health surveys used a different list of childhood adversities, so their figures are not directly comparable with those of the World Psychiatry review. These surveys found almost the same share of adults reporting adversity in rich and poorer countries alike.

• In the World Psychiatry review of adults in 206 studies, most of them from North America, 39.9% of adults reported no adverse childhood experiences. (pooled from prevalence studies, lifetime (ever), published 2023) ¹
• In the World Psychiatry review, 22.4% of adults reported one adverse childhood experience. (pooled from prevalence studies, lifetime (ever), published 2023) ¹
• In high-income countries, 38.4% of adults in the World Mental Health surveys reported at least one childhood adversity. (survey, lifetime (ever), published 2010, fieldwork year not stated) ⁴
• In low- and lower-middle-income countries, 39.1% of adults in the World Mental Health surveys reported at least one childhood adversity. (survey, lifetime (ever), published 2010, fieldwork year not stated) ⁴

Abuse and neglect

The World Health Organization reports that violence against children is common and often hidden, and that only a fraction of children who experience maltreatment ever reach official support services ³. The Australian figures come from a national survey reported in the Medical Journal of Australia ⁶.

• The World Health Organization reports that six in ten children under five worldwide, 400 million children, regularly experience physical punishment or psychological violence from parents and caregivers. (published 2026, data year not stated) ³
• WHO reports that about 1 in 7 men worldwide say they experienced sexual abuse as a child. (lifetime (ever), published 2026, data year not stated) ³
• In a national survey, 32.0% of people aged 16 and over in Australia reported physical abuse in childhood. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2021 data) ⁶
• In a national survey, 30.9% of people aged 16 and over in Australia reported emotional abuse in childhood. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2021 data) ⁶
• In a national survey, 28.5% of people aged 16 and over in Australia reported sexual abuse in childhood. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2021 data) ⁶
• In a national survey, 39.6% of people aged 16 and over in Australia reported growing up exposed to domestic violence. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2021 data) ⁶

Who is most affected

Adversity is not spread evenly. The pooled review found much higher levels among people living with mental health conditions and among people without a home.

• In the studies pooled by the World Psychiatry review, 47.5% of adults with a history of a mental health condition reported four or more adverse childhood experiences. (pooled from prevalence studies, lifetime (ever), published 2023) ¹
• In the World Psychiatry review, 59.7% of unhoused adults reported four or more adverse childhood experiences. (pooled from prevalence studies, lifetime (ever), published 2023) ¹
• In the United States, 17.3% of adults in the national Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey reported four or more adverse childhood experiences. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2011-2020 data) ²

Childhood adversity and mental health

The World Mental Health surveys found childhood adversity linked to mental health problems in adult life in every group of countries studied ⁴. It goes with a higher risk; it does not decide anyone's future. The figure from Saudi Arabia comes from the women in a national survey of adult Saudi citizens, the same survey as the Saudi figure under National figures, and uses an odds ratio. An odds ratio compares how likely something is in one group with another: above one means more likely, below one less likely. Odds ratios overstate how much more likely something is when it is common.

• In one national survey, Saudi women aged eighteen and over with four or more adverse childhood experiences had higher odds of doctor-diagnosed depression than women reporting none (odds ratio 7.0). The figure allows for other differences between the groups. (survey, 2013 data) ⁷

National figures

England's figure comes from a study in BMC Medicine, Saudi Arabia's from the International Journal for Equity in Health, and the Indonesia and Vietnam figures from the same three-country survey as Kenya's.

• In a national survey, 47% of adults aged 18 to 69 in England, almost half, reported at least one of nine adverse childhood experiences. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2013 data) ⁸
• In a national survey across Saudi Arabia, 80% of adult Saudi citizens reported at least one adverse experience before age eighteen. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2013 data) ⁷
• In a national household survey, 40.2% of adolescents aged 10 to 17 in Indonesia reported at least one adverse childhood experience. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2021 data) ⁵
• In a national household survey, 36.9% of adolescents aged 10 to 17 in Vietnam reported at least one adverse childhood experience. (survey, lifetime (ever), 2021 data) ⁵

National figures side by side

These surveys used different lists of experiences and asked people of different ages: some surveyed adults and some surveyed adolescents. Read each row with its label, and do not rank the countries.

How to read these figures

Most figures rely on people remembering their childhood. Memory can blur in either direction, and some people choose not to disclose painful experiences to an interviewer, so abuse in particular is likely to be under-reported.

An ACE score counts kinds of experience, not their severity, how long they lasted, or what support a child had. Two people with the same score can have very different stories. Our guide to the ACEs scale explains how the score is used.

The links with mental health come from surveys that ask about childhood adversity and mental health problems at the same time. They show strong associations, but adverse childhood experiences do not lead to problems for everyone; people with safe, stable and nurturing relationships at home or in their community are especially likely to do well ¹.

It is never too late to get support; see Getting help near the top of this page. If you are worried about a child's safety now, contact local child protection services or the police.

Cite this page: TherapyRoute. Adverse childhood experiences statistics worldwide. https://www.therapyroute.com/article/adverse-childhood-experiences-statistics-worldwide-by-therapyroute. Last updated 19 October 2026.

References

1. [1] Adverse childhood experiences: a meta-analysis of prevalence and moderators among half a million adults in 206 studies. World Psychiatry (Madigan et al.), 2023 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
2. [2] Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences Among U.S. Adults - Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2011-2020. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (Swedo et al.), 2023 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
3. [3] Child maltreatment. World Health Organization, 8 May 2026 who.int.
4. [4] Childhood adversities and adult psychopathology in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. The British Journal of Psychiatry (Kessler et al.), 2010 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
5. [5] The association between adverse childhood experiences and mental disorders among adolescents in Kenya, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health (Wado et al.), 2025 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
6. [6] The prevalence of child maltreatment in Australia: findings from a national survey. Medical Journal of Australia (Mathews et al.), 2023 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
7. [7] Gender-based disparities in the impact of adverse childhood experiences on adult health: findings from a national study in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. International Journal for Equity in Health (Almuneef et al.), 2017 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
8. [8] National household survey of adverse childhood experiences and their relationship with resilience to health-harming behaviors in England. BMC Medicine (Bellis et al.), 2014 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.