About 1 in 8 children have lived with someone who had substance use issues and/or who experienced mental health challenges. Parental behavior challenges frequently co-occur with other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). An ACE is an event that occurs in childhood that is either potentially traumatic or may undermine a child’s sense of safety, stability, and bonding with parents or other caring adults. ACEs can negatively impact a child’s health and well-being, and experts view cumulative ACEs as particularly harmful.

But most children who lived with someone who had a substance use or mental health challenge also lived in a family with high resilience, and in families with high resilience, other ACEs are less common.