child maltreatment psych 127c

Child Maltreatment

• One of the worst, most intrusive forms of stress

• It impinges directly on the child’s daily life, may be ongoing and unpredictable, and often involves people the child depends on and trusts

• Children’s ability to respond to stress depends on the degree of support and assistance they receive from their parents, who serve as role models

• Maltreated children may have a hard time adapting appropriately to stress

Child Maltreatment: Four Types

• Neglect

• Physical Abuse

• Sexual Abuse

• Emotional Abuse

History

• Has always existed historically but was not seen as a problem until recently 

• Until about 1900, children were viewed as the property of their fathers who had an unchallenged right to punish them

• Animals had greater protection

• Has wide-ranging effects on physical and emotional development

Context

• Maltreatment often occurs within ongoing relationships that are supposed to be protective, supportive, and nurturing

• Intensity of the violence tends to increase over time, but in some cases physical violence may decrease or even stop

• Abused/neglected children face dilemmas:

  • the victim wants to stop the violence but also longs to belong to the family in which they are being abused

  • affection and attention may coexist with violence and abuse

• Societies struggle to balance parental rights with children’s right to be safe and free from harm

• Maltreatment harms children physically, in developing relationships with others, and in their fundamental sense of safety and self-esteem

Article 19

• States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.

• Such protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective procedures for the establishment of social programmes to provide necessary support for the child and for those who have the care of the child, as well as for other forms of prevention and for identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment described heretofore, and, as appropriate, for judicial involvement

Healthy Families

• knowledge of child development and expectations 

• adequate coping skills 

• normal parent-child attachment and communication

• home management skills

• provision of social and health services

Neglect 

• Most common type of maltreatment 

• Something you should be doing but you’re not

• Physical

  • not attending to physical care, like food, shelter, health care, or inadequate supervision

• Educational

  • not enforcing engagement in appropriate educational activity

• Emotional

  • not investing in development of proper values, emotional stability (e.g., witnessing domestic violence, allowed access to drugs, pornography)

Physical Abuse

• Involves multiple acts of aggression

• Hitting, punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, shaking…

• In most cases the injuries are not intentional, but the result of overly severe discipline or punishment

• Time out from reinforcement keeps parents from hurting their children and leave them alone 

Sexual Abuse

• Fondling, intercourse, incest, sodomy, exhibitionism, commercial exploitation (prostitution, pornography)

• “Conspiracy of silence”--often no one will admit or talk about it

• About one-third of sexually abused children neither report nor exhibit visible symptoms

• Many children recover significantly over 12-18 months following abuse

Emotional Abuse

• Repeated acts or omissions by caregivers that have caused serious behavioral, cognitive, or emotional problems

• Threats, put-downs, shaming, extreme forms of punishment and cruelty

ACEs

• Adverse Childhood Experiences can include violence, abuse, and growing up in a family with mental health or substance use problems

• Tests children suspected of abuse through a series of questions and counts how many experiences you have had 

• Being a woman or a minority group increases risks 

• Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect how the body responds to stress

• ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood

• 61% of adults had at least one ACE and 16% had 4 or more types of ACEs

• Females and several racial/ethnic minority groups were at greater risk of experiencing 4 or more ACEs

• Associated with increased risk for health problems across the lifespan

PTSD

• Traumatic event: threatened death or serious harm to self or other

• Response involved intense fear or horror

• Persistently re-experienced (e.g., nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts)

• Persistent avoidance (e.g., behavioral avoidance, numbing, poor recall, detachment)

• Persistent increased arousal (e.g., poor sleep, anger, heightened startle, hypervigilance)

• Most kids who experience maltreatment don’t go on to develop PTSD