Childhood Maltreatment

Childhood maltreatment is a prevalent problem through out the world. As a child grows and matures the brain continues to develop according its experiences. During this time sensitive periods of development for different areas of the brain. A few areas that are of interest are the stress-influenced areas, which are at an increased risk for developmental problems when exposed to maltreatment. The extra stress from such exposures can influence abnormalities throughout the brain, which have been linked to structure changes with in the corpus callosum, anterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal, orbitofrontal cortex, and hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebellum, as well as changes to stress related hormone systems. These structural changes are associated with an increased risk of psychopathology and other life long educational and physiological risk.

Childhood trauma affects many brain systems. The stress response system and its cosystems pay the greatest toll when a child experiences chronic threat. Taking a closer look at the

The studies on children with risk behaviors were done because the increasing number of children being place in foster care due to maltreatment. This is how the study was done to get a up to date examined on youth that had been though protective services and vulnerability factors in foster care. Some individual predicted placing youth in the foster care system would cause an impact in the maltreatment and physical abuse. Maltreatment and physically abuse don’t stop due a child being place in foster care out-of-home care; children that has been in any type of Truman will need some kind of counsel services.

Challenges have varied throughout my life in both health complications and society itself. Early trauma has conflicted my mom for sometime whose brothers died in a horrendous drowning accident in 1979 . As life progressed and I came into the world, drug addiction and other illnesses manifested in our outside family, eventually making its way to my older sister. These events at a young age helped me understand reality faster than a normal person.

Research into children’s memories has serious implications to society an individual’s involved in a specific case. Three outcomes are possible (a) the researchers may discredit the children’s testimony in real abuse cases and strengthens the defenses case against a real perpetrator; (b) the child who has witnessed or experienced a crime testifies accurately and truthfully, resulting in a perpetrator going to prison and not committing another crime; or (c) the child has given false accusations as a result of faulty interview tactics by law enforcement or social service workers that result in false charges and imprisonment. Cognitive psychologists take these instances into consideration when creating studies regarding children’s memories and relating them to the judicial system (Ceci & Bruyn, 1993).

Further biological research on the effect of psychological trauma on the neurochemistry of memory may help clinicians distinguish between true repressed memories and false memories in clients who report abuse. However, to date there is no method to determine the accuracy of these memories. Therefore clinicians and the

Family violence is always disheartening. Childhood sexual abuse is by far the worse. There are many forms of childhood sexual abuse. The sexual abuse can involve seduction by a beloved relative or it can be a violent act committed by a stranger. Childhood sexual trauma causes psychological, interpersonal, and behavioral. This paper will show a first account of the impact of childhood trauma.

From recent studies concluded by Nichole Yuan, et al., “women who reported childhood sexual abuse were five times more likely to be diagnosed with PTSD compared to non victims” (2). According to Briere and Elliott, “groups of adult sexual abuse survivors have been found to display more intrusive, avoidant, and arousal symptoms of PTSD than those not abused as children” (56). Ranna Parekh defines PTSD as, “ a psychiatric disorder that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, rape or other violent personal assault.” Especially prominent for adult survivors are PTSD related flashbacks-sudden, intrusive sensory experiences, often involving visual, auditory, olfactory, and/ or tactile sensations reminiscent of the original assault, experienced as though they were occurring in the present rather than as a memory of a past event” (Briere & Elliott 56). Although, PTSD appears to be significantly increased due to childhood sexual assault, others are debating upon whether it is as prominent as it is said to be. Cameron Boyd claims, “Some authors are critical of PTSD as a concept for understanding victim/survivors. The primary reason for this is that PTSD, as a psychiatric diagnosis, implies that the individual survivor suffers from a medical problem, and that her

The first step in preventing future sufferings is understanding the problem. Sara R. Jaffee and Cindy W. Christian, in their article, “ The Biological Embedding of Child Abuse and Neglect Implications for Policy and Practice” inform that child maltreatment often causes serious implications later in life, and can be explained by medical and psychological responses. Jaffee and Christian support this suggestion with studies and experiments conducted on adults with neglected pasts that show that “Victims of maltreatment differ from non-victims with respect to brain structure and function, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-(HPA) axis and autonomic nervous system function, immune function, and epigenetic markers”(Jaffee and Cindy 1). Jaffee and Cindy’s purpose is to inform readers of the medical and scientific explanations of the long term effects of child maltreatment in order to allow others to better understand the dire need to help the children suffering from maltreatment.

Childhood emotional abuse (CEA) appears to be more novel in the research world in comparison to physical and sexual abuse. However, with the research that has been conducted, there are clear suggestions that CEA has similar, if not more severe, consequences to childhood physical abuse (CPA) and childhood sexual abuse (CSA) (Gibb, Chelminski, & Zimmerman, 2007). For instance, research by Gibb and associates (2007) found that participants who reported experiencing CEA were more likely to also have major depressive disorder and social phobia, than those who reported experiencing CPA or CSA. The research by Gibb et al. suggests that CEA may be more detrimental than CPA or CSA to the psychological development of a child. However, what is missing

The US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes four types of childhood maltreatment. Any number of effects can result from these unfortunate realities for many children. These effects have potential to increase the likelihood of a substance abuse rather quickly and, sadly, may stick with them for the remainder of their lives. Early experiences of maltreatment increase the likelihood of psychological and emotional distress. In order to escape this pain, individuals may seek help from substances to escape the pain caused from the maltreatment. This being said, experiencing trauma as a child may develop into substance abuse. Additionally, being female has the potential to strengthen chance of substance abuse for individuals

Trauma caused by experiences of child abuse and neglect appears to have serious effects on the developing brain (“Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect for Children and Adolescents”, 2014) Consequences of child abuse and neglect can affect all avenues of development; being physical, developmental, emotional, psychological and social, all of which are interrelated. It can also lead to mental health problems, learning and developmental problems along with behavioural and physical problems. After reviewing the information on abuse and neglect, a research proposal that was generated is looking at the ways in which neglect and abuse impact the ability to optimize working memory. It is known that abuse and neglect significantly impacts language development because it can interfere with the brains ability to develop properly. However there are still many avenues that could be studied further. What exactly is being impacted and how? The more studies that can be conducted, the more information the

Out-of-home care (OOHC) refers to the care of children who are unable to live with their families, usually because they have been subjected to maltreatment, or are at risk of maltreatment (CFCA, 2015a). It has been shown that childhood maltreatment can have significant psychological and physiological effects on childhood development across multiple key domains, including cognitive, social-emotional, academic, and language (Perry, 2002; Perry, 2009; CFCA, 2014). In addition, numerous studies have shown that children who have suffered maltreatment are at a higher risk of experiencing speech and language delays than other children (Arora, Kaltner & Williams, 2014; Nathanson & Tzioumi, 2007; Chambers, Saunders, New, Williams & Stachurska, 2010).

Throughout the world, some children suffer the trauma of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, leaving many overwhelmed by complex traumatic distress and at risk of psychopathology as adults (McCormack & Thomson, 2017). As many as 68% of children face emotional, physical, and/or sexual traumatic events in childhood (Cavanaugh, 2016). Contingent on the significant level of stress of the traumatic event, some will receive a psychiatric diagnosis in adulthood (McCormack & Thomson, 2017). Traumatic events are a threat or involve harm (McLaughlin & Lamber, 2017). Complex trauma during childhood may result from multiple, chronic, and prolonged developmentally adverse traumatic events, often as a result of interpersonal events in the child’s

Childhood traumas have been associated with many psychological problems later in life. Specifically, sexual abuse during childhood, shows correlations with many different types of anxiety disorder. There is many theories as to why this is, but some of the prominent ones deal with memory repression. Memory repression was first introduced by Freud when he described it as consciously taking an event out of their memory. Since the population of child sexual abuse survivors has been found to be 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 men, it is important to undertint the possible implications of their trauma, to prevent the chance of negative consequences as they grow older. Especially