Is preventing child abuse a plausible Cause X?

Abstract

Today I’m flipping through The Body Keeps the Score, a pop sci review of the academic research on trauma to date. I was quite surprised by this passage, on p. 150 of my copy: The first time I heard Robert Anda present the results of the ACE study, he could not hold back his tears. In his career at the CDC he had previously worked in several major risk areas, including tobacco research and cardiovascular health. But when the ACE study data started to appear on his computer screen, he realized that they had stumbled upon the gravest and most costly public health issue in the United States: child abuse. [Anda] had calculated that its overall costs exceeded those of cancer or heart disease and that eradicating child abuse in America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two-thirds, and suicide, IV drug use, and domestic violence by three-quarters. It would also have a dramatic effect on workplace performance and vastly decrease the need for incarceration.

Essentially, the ACE study seems to demonstrate that childhood trauma is upstream of a wide variety of burdensome problems.