Maltreatment common for U.S. children

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A substantial percentage of young U.S. adults say they suffered some form of neglect or abuse as children, researchers reported Tuesday.

Of nearly 15,200 young adults in a national health study, 41 percent said that as children, they’d been left home alone when an adult should have been present. And more than one-quarter said their parents or other caregivers had hit, slapped or kicked them.

The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, suggest that child maltreatment—in the form of abuse or neglect—is common among U.S. children, and the consequences can be serious.

Young adults who reported childhood maltreatment were also more likely to report drug and alcohol abuse, violent behavior, depression and poor health during their teens.

Though studies have been investigating child abuse and neglect for years, the true scope of the problem, including its long-term consequences, has not been fully clear, the lead author of the new report told Reuters Health.

“It’s a hard thing to measure well,” said Dr. Jon M. Hussey of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Data based on cases reported to child welfare services, for example, capture only a portion of the problem, he explained.

For their study, Hussey and his colleagues used data from a national survey that followed thousands of U.S. adolescents through young adulthood. As adults, they reported whether they’d ever suffered any of several types of child maltreatment.

“Supervision neglect,” or being left home alone at a young age, was the most common form of maltreatment, followed by physical abuse. Of the 28 percent of study participants who said they’d been physically abused, half said it happened three or more times.

In addition, about 12 percent said they’d suffered physical neglect—instances in which their parents failed to provide for their basic needs, like keeping them clean or giving them clothing or enough food. Another 4.5 percent said they were sexually abused as children.

Each of these forms of maltreatment appeared to carry long-term consequences, Hussey’s team found. As teenagers, study participants who’d suffered childhood maltreatment were at greater risk of various health and behavioral problems.

Past studies have suggested that childhood neglect and abuse can have far-reaching effects, Hussey noted. “I think one of the contributions of this study is validate those past findings,” he said.

The results also put a spotlight on the problem of childhood neglect, which is more common than physical and sexual abuse but draws less public awareness.

“I hope the findings will attract attention to the problem of child neglect,” Hussey said.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, September 2006. 

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