Almost 60 percent of Americans surveyed say they suffered at least one form of physical or emotional abuse or other adversity in their childhoods, raising the risk of later health problems and early death, U.S. government researchers said on Thursday.

The report by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and community health departments is the first to count how common such events are, and it raises concerns about the need for more mental health services for young people.

Substance abuse was the most common childhood adversity, with 29 percent of those surveyed saying they lived with a problem drinker, alcoholic, or someone who abused street or prescription drugs. Almost a total of 26 percent of those surveyed said they were verbally abused and just under 15 pct said they had been physically abused -- limited as having been vanquished or hit, but spanking was booted out.

In each family, grownups over 55 were far less likely than younger peoples to say they had one of these troubles. For example, while a percentage of 16.9 of grownups aged 18 to 24 said they had been physically abused, only 9.6 of those 55 and older said they had been.

The investigators surveyed 26,229 people in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington. They determined that more than 59 percentage of grownups said they had one or more traumatic moments in their childhood and 8.7 percent reported having lived through five or more.

While sexual abuse, family mental illness and family substance abuse were more commonly reported by adult females, they were common among all racial and ethnic groups surveyed. The study, put out in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's report on death and disease, included answers to 11 heads about puerility experiences, including verbal, physical and sexual abuse, captivity of a family penis, family mental illness, family substance abuse, domestic violence and divorce.

With some of the classes, the investigators looked to see how ordinarily something occurred. For example, for a person to be considered verbally abused, they had to answer "more than once" to the head, "How often did a parent or grownup in your home ever swear at you, abuse you, or order you down?"

With sexual assault, a person need only have replied once to a interrogative such as : "How often did anyone at least 5 yrs older than you or an grownup, force play you to have sex?". Only 7.2 percentage of peoples said they grew up in a family in which one person was in prison house.

More findings from the study are as follows:

* 12.2 percent enounced they had been sexually mistreated.

* 26.6 percent articulated their parents had been severalized or split up.

* 19.4 percent sounded out they had lived with mortal who was lowered, mentally ill or self destructive.

* 16.3 percent enunciated they found domestic violence.