Cycle Breaker and Change Maker| The Financial Cost of Unresolved Negative Cycles

We know enough about negative intergenerational trauma cycles to understand they are unhealthy and dangerous and that there is a huge personal and financial cost.  However, what are we truly doing as a movement to prevent this?  There are people trying to make a difference yet why has this not taken off when so many I would argue lesser important trends and issues have?

I am proof that one can heal from trauma, but I also know first hand this is a process that takes years, costs a lot of money and is easier to walk away from than to go through.  It also must be completed in order to stop the vicious cycle.

I am going to give you some numbers to help put the problem into perspective, I expect most of you will be shocked to see how costly the problem is:

In 2018 child abuse cost Canadians $23 billion dollars annually and in the United States of America the cost was $2 trillion dollars annually - this is in the form of health care, court fees, social services and long-term effects on earnings, this is a conservative number because we know that not all cases are reported and addressed, this number has only increased over time.  In 2023 a study came out explaining that in the United States the economic burden of health conditions caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences was $14 trillion dollars.

The countries I have just mentioned are prosperous - the United States is the world's third most wealthiest nation and Canada is the world's eighth wealthiest nation.  Can you imagine what is happening in countries that are not prosperous?

Now you can understand why I am so puzzled as to why we are not doing more about this.  

Please share this information with those around you, people need to be aware of a problem and then admit to it in order to make progress.  This theme flows through my previous episodes, in order for us to work through our traumatic experiences, we need to acknowledge their very existence in the first place.

If anyone out there needs help pushing this movement out there, let me know, I would love to talk to you to see how we can make a positive meaningful change together.

You can find ways  to contact and follow me here:
https://linktr.ee/cyclebreakerchangemaker

Transcript

Episode 6: The Financial Cost of Unresolved Negative Cycles 

Today's episode will be in a different format than my regular format in order to allow me to share very important information, views and facts.

One of the most guaranteed outcomes about the human experience is that we can be short sighted and need to learn lessons the hard way over and over again.  It is very frustrating to see just how short-sighted we can actually be.  I am on a mission to change this as it relates to childhood abuse resulting from negative intergenerational trauma cycles.

Can you imagine if even for a moment being trapped with abusive parents during a pandemic, having nowhere to hide from them and no safe adults to go to?  The time to manage the outcome of this is now, not when these children become adults.

We know enough about negative intergenerational trauma cycles to understand they are unhealthy and dangerous and that there is a huge personal and financial cost.  However, what are we truly doing as a movement to prevent this?  There are people trying to make a difference yet why has this not taken off when so many I would argue lesser important trends and issues have?

While there has been great headway in for example finally calling intimate partner violence an epidemic, the glaring and gaping hole in this resolution and realization is - what about the children?  Aside from individual organizations and acts completed by our government I am puzzled as to why society as a whole is not looking out for the children and putting tangible measures in place to help them and keep them safe.  There should be a loud and accessible  discussion regarding long term impacts of the abuse as it relates to children.   Children are innocent, it is a privilege to have them - they do not choose to be born and a child is not something that is owed to anyone ever.  Additionally, they are the future - they are the ones who will be running the show so to speak when we are too old to do so.  So why wouldn’t we want to set them up for a lifetime of happiness and success?

I am proof that one can heal from trauma, but I also know first hand this is a process that takes years, costs a lot of money and is easier to walk away from than to go through.  It also must be completed in order to stop the vicious cycle.

Let’s look at the children who have lived through the pandemic as one sample group.  My observation of the majority of the pandemic youth is a lack of needed social skills, learning loss, lack of motivation, depression, anxiety and addiction. One of the saddest results of the pandemic has been polarization of views, political divides and violence and the revelation of how strong systemic racism still is.   Many of these issues are beyond the understanding of such young minds as it should be, but what happens is they often adopt the views of their parents and caregivers without question because they do not get exposed to anything else.  This is all incredibly dangerous if not managed and intervened.

The intergenerational trauma that exists in the adult generation are a result of what our grand and great grandparents endured either through their lived experiences during and post war, political upheaval, controlling governments, oppression, racism, poverty, immigration to a new country fleeing from another in an effort to forge a better path forward for their family.  These are generations where mental health was never discussed, instead it was dismissed and those that experienced it were given horrible names like witches.  They were treated as lesser than, as if there was something wrong with them when in fact this was a result of inherited trauma or a traumatic experience.   Our ancestors were of course not immune to mental health disorders or trauma, and if not processed and discussed out in the open these move through to the next generation in many ways. 

Now let’s look at the financial cost. 

I am going to give you some numbers to help put the problem into perspective, I expect most of you will be shocked to see how costly the problem is:

In 2018 child abuse cost Canadians $23 billion dollars annually and in the United States of America the cost was $2 trillion dollars annually - this is in the form of health care, court fees, social services and long-term effects on earnings, this is a conservative number because we know that not all cases are reported and addressed, this number has only increased over time.  In 2023 a study came out explaining that in the United States the economic burden of health conditions caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences was $14 trillion dollars.

The countries I have just mentioned are prosperous - the United States is the world's third most wealthiest nation and Canada is the world's eighth wealthiest nation.  Can you imagine what is happening in countries that are not prosperous?

Now you can understand why I am so puzzled as to why we are not doing more about this.  

Please share this information with those around you, people need to be aware of a problem and then admit to it in order to make progress.  This theme flows through my previous episodes, in order for us to work through our traumatic experiences, we need to acknowledge their very existence in the first place.

If anyone out there needs help pushing this movement out there, let me know, I would love to talk to you to see how we can make a positive meaningful change together.