RITE Research Institute of Trauma Economy

The economics of psychological trauma.

The Research Institute of Trauma Economy is a research institute in formation that studies the economic consequences of psychological trauma. We work from the published evidence and public data today, and we are building toward a public data trust for de-identified clinical outcomes.

Status: in formation  ·  Page revised 09 Oct 2026

Problem

Trauma's costs land in health care, employment, education and the justice system, and untreated trauma costs most where resources are scarcest.

The clinical data that could show what treatment does over time is held in proprietary systems, unused or used to manage claims, and mostly describes people who could afford care. Governed as a public good, it could show what works, for whom, and at what cost.

63.9% of U.S. adults report at least one adverse childhood experience. Swedo et al., MMWR 72(26), 2023. BRFSS 2011–2020.
17.3% report four or more. Same source.
$14.1T estimated annual burden of health conditions linked to adverse childhood experiences among U.S. adults, 2019. Of this, $183B is direct medical spending; the rest is lost healthy life-years valued in dollars. Peterson et al., JAMA Network Open 6(12), 2023.
7–10% estimated annual social return to early-childhood investment in the Perry Preschool program. RITE asks the same question of trauma treatment and prevention. Heckman et al., Journal of Public Economics, 2010.

Research questions

  1. Q1What does psychological trauma cost the United States each year, and who pays?
  2. Q2Which adverse childhood experiences predict which adult economic outcomes, and how strongly?
  3. Q3How does untreated trauma shape a working life, from first job to exit?
  4. Q4What is the economic return to treating and preventing trauma, and who captures it?
  5. Q5Who carries the burden of trauma, and whose experience is missing from the clinical record?
  6. Q6Where is the money spent on trauma's consequences allocated, and how much of it reaches prevention and treatment?
  7. Q7Can a single Trauma Index track population trauma burden over time in a way policymakers can use?

Methods

  1. Stage 1

    Systematic review and meta-analysis of the existing literature, with re-analysis of public survey data.

    CDC BRFSS · NSDUH · MEPS · NLSY97 · PSID · Add Health

  2. Stage 2

    Linked government, health and insurance datasets under data use agreements, with university research partners.

  3. Stage 3

    Pooled de-identified clinical outcomes, donated by clinical software platforms, held in public trust and analyzed with statistical and machine-learning methods.

All clinical data is analyzed inside RITE's own secured environment. It is never sent to outside AI services and never used to decide anything about an individual.

Governance

RITE will hold donated clinical data as a public trust, overseen by a majority-independent board. These principles are fixed before any data arrives.

Donated, never sold

Data enters by donation and never leaves by sale or license.

De-identified before transfer

RITE accepts no identifiable data.

Independent findings

Data partners have no say over questions, methods or results.

Closed analytics

Analysis stays inside RITE's secured environment.

No individual decisions

Nothing RITE builds is used to judge a person's care, coverage or work.

Open methods

Protocols are registered, code is published, limitations are stated.

All ten data principles, and the terms of the founder's conflict of interest, are in the prospectus.

Status

Phase
1 of 5, pre-seed
Legal entity
Nonprofit in formation; incorporation planned
Advisors
Not yet announced
Data partners
Seeking founding partners
Publications
Working papers and policy recommendations will be published here first.

People

Ian Noël, LMHC-D, NCC

Founder

Licensed mental health counselor, certified trauma clinician and clinical supervisor in New York. His trauma-focused clinical work led him to ask what trauma costs. Ian is also the founder of intuitiveSuite, Inc., which makes intuitiveEMDR, clinical documentation software for trauma therapists. RITE's governance principles apply to that relationship.

Advisors

To be announced.

Contact

Researchers, funders and prospective data partners