Traumatic events can affect any child’s health, raising their risk of certain diseases and negative outcomes later in life. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that one subset of kids is much more likely to go through stressful, sometimes health-endangering experiences: those with disabilities. These children were nearly twice as likely to have experienced the incarceration of a parent or guardian and more than three times as likely to have witnessed or experienced violence, the analysis shows. The study relied on data from the 2019 National Health Interview Survey and compared reports from a “knowledgeable adult, usually a parent,” of children with disabilities to those reported by the adults who care for children without disabilities. About 17 percent of children with disabilities were reported to have been a victim of or witnessed violence in their neighborhood, compared with 5.3 percent of their counterparts.
