Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Statistics can Serve to Minimize
the Real, Human Pain of Trauma

I came across a CNN article recently entitled “PTSD in women may have genetic link”. Early in the article it states, “10% of women and 5% of men develop the condition [of PTSD] sometime in their lives.” It offers no supporting evidence or sources for these numbers. I instantly felt highly suspicious as I see so many traumatized people in my practice as well as so many traumatized, but untreated, people in my life. Such trauma can come from many different sources, including:

Neglect of essential care and love in childhood
Sexual, physical or emotional abuse in childhood
Surviving a natural disaster (floods, hurricanes, etc.)
Accidents (car accident, fire, work accident, etc)
Sexual or physical assault
Death of a loved one
Combat trauma
Domestic violence by a partner, sibling or other family member
Bullying in school or workplace

Statistics can be used to hide the human pain of trauma, abuse and PTSD.

There aren’t really good statistics about what percentage of the population have experienced each of these potentially traumatizing events. Of these, the best tracked is probably sexual abuse, even though it is generally agreed that 90-95% of all sexual abuse cases go unreported to the police.

A report by the FBI in 1999 states that 1 in 4 girls are sexually assaulted before the age of 18. That’s 25%.
The Rape Abuse & Incest National Network reports that “1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime”. That’s 17% and 3% respectively.
The organization Women of Substance reports that “38% of girls and 16% of boys are sexually abused before the age of 18.”
The US Center for Disease Control reports that 10.6% of women and 2.1% of men reported experiencing forced sex at some time in their lives. These numbers skyrocketed in minority groups up to 34%.

It is clear that our society has a problem in tolerating such high levels of sexual and other forms of abuse and trauma. We bury the painful truth underneath these statistics. And, such wounds are vastly under-reported.

If we knew how many people suffer each of those forms of trauma listed above and added them together, I believe we’d be looking not at the 10% quoted in the 1st paragraph above, but at numbers exceeding 80% of the population! While explaining recently to a new friend my specialty of treating those who have experienced these things, she said, “Isn’t that a niche market?” I answered, “It may be a niche market, but it’s a really big niche.”

Some might be quick to say, “but just because they had that experience doesn’t mean they were traumatized.” It is true that if a person is “well-resourced”, they can have a traumatic experience without being traumatized. Well-resourced means a person has many strengths and sources of joy and support in one’s life, such as loving, supportive people who know how to listen sympathetically and who help to create a safe time and space for their loved one for recovery after a traumatizing event. Unfortunately, in a society where “manning-up” and “putting a good face on it” are considered the best way to deal with pain and discomfort, the simple truth is that having such meaningful support is more the exception than the rule . As a trauma therapist, I know that very often such experiences wound physical and emotional boundaries, decrease the capacity for joy and intimacy, and reduce effectiveness in ones career.

The toll on the sane functioning of our society of such wounds is incalculable, but certainly enormous. Alice Miller, in her groundbreaking book, Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries wrote,

“Today we have conclusive evidence that this cost of survival not only is much too high for the individual but also turns out to be the greatest threat to all humanity…And we have statistics showing clear connections between early neglect and abuse and subsequent adult violence. Why is it that hardly any conclusions are being drawn from these statistics? The repression of past torments and its cost render people deaf to the screams of children and blind to the obvious connections. Thus the factors so clearly revealed by the statistics are ignored to block the eruption of once repressed pain, to prevent the recognition of the truth.”

As I have written extensively elsewhere in this website, traumatic wounds can be healed with good support and effective therapy, but never by minimizing and denial.