Child abuse: a community problem.
Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: It has been more than 35 years since “the battered-child syndrome ” was firstdescribed, in the Journal of the American Medical Association.1 Despite an in-creased alertness to physical abuse as a cause of childhood injury and growing awareness of other types of child victimization such as sexual abuse, we still un-derstand very little about the epidemiology of child maltreatment. Although child abuse is often described as an important public health problem, research into its causes and prevention has been seriously lacking. In 1997, findings from the Ontario Health Supplement regarding the preva-lence of child physical and sexual abuse were published.2 This general population survey involving close to 10 000 participants was carried out in 1990–1991 as an adjunct to the Ontario Health Survey to gather in-depth information about the epidemiology of mental disorders, including correlates. Respondents were 15 years of age and older. Within the study, a self-administered questionnaire (the Child Maltreatment History Self-Report) asked participants about their experi-ences of having been physically or sexually abused by an adult while they “were growing up. ” The definition of physical abuse applied to 6 categories ranging from being pushed, grabbed or shoved (often or sometimes) to being physically
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Author: H L MacMillan
Language: English
Topic: Child Abuse and Trauma
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2159894768