In 1996, Ange McAuley was just 11 years old when ABC’s Four Corners profiled her family living on the outskirts of Brisbane.
At the time, her mother was pregnant with her sixth child and her father had long since moved to Perth.
WARNING: This story contains details that may be distressing to some readers.
It was a story about child protection and the show profiled the role of community volunteers helping her mother, who had been in and out of mental health wards.
Ange was the eldest and it was her turn to prepare her younger brothers for school.
When the new baby arrived, he would stay home and change diapers.
“It was crazy I didn’t go to school much back then,” he said.
At that age she already had a secret that she had been sexually abused at the age of six by her stepfather, who would later be convicted of the crime.
“In the 1990s, a lot of people kept things hidden and didn’t talk about it outside of the family,” he said.
“I’ve carried all these huge burdens that weren’t even mine. I was sexually abused. I didn’t ask for it.”
She says the trauma triggered a lifetime of mental health problems from substance abuse and self-harm as a teenager to postnatal depression.
Hidden source of our mental health crisis
A new study by the University of Sydney’s Matilda Center has established how far Australia’s mental health crisis can be traced back to this type of child abuse and neglect.
Research has found that childhood abuse is responsible for up to 41% of common mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self-harm and suicide attempts.
The research, which is based on a 2023 meta-analysis of 34 research studies covering 54,000 people, found that abuse accounted for 41% of suicide attempts in Australia, 35% of self-harm cases and 21% of episodes of depression.
It defined child abuse as physical, sexual, emotional abuse, emotional or physical neglect, and domestic violence before the age of 18.
Lead researcher Lucy Grummitt said it is the first work to quantify the direct impact of child abuse on long-term mental health.
It found that eradicating child abuse would prevent more than 1.8 million cases of depression, anxiety and substance use disorders.
“It shows how many people in Australia suffer from potentially preventable mental health problems,” he said.
Dr Grummitt said in 2023 child abuse in Australia accounted for 66,143 years of life lost and 118,493 years lived with disability due to associated mental health conditions.
“We know that when a child is exposed to that level of stress or trauma, it causes a lot of changes in the brain and the body,” Dr. Grummitt said.
“Things like the body’s altered stress response will cause a child to be hypervigilant for threats. It can lead to difficulties with emotion regulation, to be able to cope with difficult emotions.”
While some areas of abuse are trending down, figures from last year’s landmark Australian Child Abuse Study show rising rates of adolescent sexual abuse and emotional abuse .
This study found that more than one in three women and one in seven men between the ages of 16 and 24 had experienced childhood sexual abuse.
Dr Grummitt said the prevalence of such abuse could help explain rising rates of psychological distress among the same age group.
“They could be teenagers who are struggling to really deal with difficult emotions, and certainly trauma can play a role in causing those difficult emotions,” she said.
Mental health scars emerge early
For Ange, the trauma of her early years first showed up in her teens, when she started acting, she remembers hitting walls and cars, drinking alcohol and using drugs.
“I would get mad and just scream,” she said.
“I used to talk to the teachers. I didn’t finish school. My mom kicked me out a lot when I was a teenager. I went back and forth between mom and dad.”
When she revealed her abuse, she was self-harming and at one point tried to take her own life.
“I just did,” he said.
“I was sick of having to get up every day. I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
Later, she would have inappropriate relationships with much older men and suffer from depression, including postnatal depression.
“It’s definitely affected relationships, it’s affected my friendships, it’s affected my intimate relationships,” she said.
“Flashbacks can appear at the most inopportune times when you are back in that moment and feel guilt and shame.
“I feel like it’s slowed me down a lot.”
He calls for a mental health “immunization.”
Dr Grummitt said child abuse and neglect should be treated as a national public health priority.
In Australia, suicide is the leading cause of death among young people.
“It is critical that we invest in prevention rather than devoting all our investments to treating mental health problems,” he said.
His team has suggested that child development and mental health visits become a regular feature throughout a person’s life and proposed a mental health “immunization program.”
Chief executive of mental health charity Prevention United, Stephen Carbone, said they estimate that less than 1% of mental health funding goes to prevention.
“There has been a large steady increase in per capita funding for mental health over the last 30 years, but this has not been translated into reductions,” said Dr Carbone, a GP.
“You’re not going to be able to prevent mental health conditions unless you start to address some of these big causes, particularly child abuse.”
He said most of Australia’s child protection system was about reacting to problems rather than trying to prevent them.
“If you’re not addressing upstream risk factors or putting in protective factors, you’re continuing to get more and more young people into trouble and services are overwhelmed,” he said.
Now a mother of two teenagers, Ange says she wants to break the cycle and has been going to therapy regularly to help identify and avoid destructive patterns she’s fallen into.
“I love my girls so much and I want the best for them.”
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