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Child Abuse And Neglect: A Case Study

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Child abuse and neglect has long lasting effects on the physical development of a child’s brain as well as how the brain processes situations. One of the ways childhood maltreatment effects the brain is how it responds to stress, which can affect other areas of an individual’s health. As Dr. Panzer explains, “The purpose of the stress response is to mobilize resources with the aim of increasing the individual’s chance of survival. Inappropriate responsiveness of the stress system may contribute to various endocrine, metabolic, autoimmune and psychiatric disorders.” (Panzer, 2008, p.2). Since abuse and neglect are highly stressful situations it is common for the aforementioned health concerns to arise from the overactive stress response, and although a child can be taken out of the toxic environment the disorders may be long lasting. …show more content…

Dr. Panzer explains in her article two fundamental ways the brain develops during childhood and how one of them is affected by neglect. As she states, “In these experience-dependent processes, new synapses are formed in response to environmental input. This accounts for the learning of various skills. In general, neglect leads to deprivation of input needed by the infant brain at times of experience-expectant maturation.” (Panzer, 2008, p.2). The human brain undergoes its largest changes in the earliest stages of childhood, when a child is neglected they miss out on the chance to create those new synapses and may miss their chance for some of them to develop at

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