Child Maltreatment: Causes, Prevention, and Psychosocial Consequences

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of child maltreatment, defining it as emotional, physical, and sexual abuse or neglect that harms a child's development. It explores various causes, including inadequate parental skills, unrealistic expectations, lack of support, substance misuse, mental health problems, and past childhood experiences. The essay also outlines prevention strategies, such as strengthening economic support, promoting positive parenting, and providing early childhood education. Furthermore, it discusses the significant psychosocial impact of child abuse, highlighting its association with mental health issues, substance abuse, and long-term psychological and emotional consequences. The research references several studies that emphasize the detrimental effects of child abuse on children's well-being and future outcomes. This essay provides a valuable resource for understanding the complexities of child abuse and its far-reaching implications.

Running head: CHILD MALTREATMENT 1
Child Abuse
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Child abuse is defined as emotional and physical mistreatment, negligent treatment,
sexual misuse or any form of child’s commercial exploitation which results to the possible effect
to the child’s healthy development, dignity or survival in terms of affiliation in trust,
accountability or power.
Causes
Inadequate support resources and parental skills may bring about difficulties of caring for
children’s wellbeing and may lead to child abuse. Some of the factors that contribute to child
abuse are discussed below; (Ajilian et al, 2015).
Unrealistic expectations: these expectations are the low understanding of the developmental
stages and behavior that occurs to a child while growing.
Lack of support and isolation: this can cause abuse to the child where there are no friends, family
members, partners or other community support that assist in the demands of parenting.
Alcohol, gambling problems, and drugs: exposing children to substance misuse that may lead to
addiction is an effect of a parent’s inability to meet the needs of their children.
Mental health problems/ illness or intellectual disability: a child with mental issues may be
exposed to child abuse for he/she is unable to express him/herself properly. Parents with
intellectual disability are unable to provide adequate care to their children, and this may lead to
child abuse (Ajilian et al, 2015).
Past childhood experiences: when parents had ever experienced a kind of abuse during their
childhood in their families, it may lead them to develop insecure parenting styles and skills
(Bartlett, Kotake, Fauth & Easterbrooks, 2017).

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Stress: medical problems in life, financial pressures, job worries while caring for children or a
family are among the aspects that may lead to the misuse of children for instance forced labor.
Lack of parenting skills and having low self-confidence: some parents have insufficient parental
skills, and thus they believe that use excessive force to discipline their children is acceptable.
Other parents do doubt their ability to meet all their children essential needs and desires, and this
can result in child abuse (Ajilian et al, 2015).
Prevention
Some of the child abuse prevention strategies and guidelines are discussed below. The
prevention guidelines and strategies have been developed to keep the children from becoming a
statistic as a result of child neglect and abuse (Fortson et al, 2016).
Guidelines
A parent or a child's caregiver should be alert on the changes that occur in a child during
the developmental stages, behavior, and attitude. One should avoid disciplining his/her child
while they are angry. It is advisable for parents to participate in their children’s activities and
knows who their friends are. It is recommendable to the parents to always listen to the children
and understand what they try to explain concerning their experiences. Teach the children the
correct name of their private parts of the body and be alert in case a child reveals a kind of
premature sexual understanding (Keddell, 2015).
Strategies
Strengthening of the economic support to the family: this approach can be applied to the
family friends work policies and strengthening the financial security in the household.

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Transformation of social custom to sustain parents and encourage helpful parenting: this
involves education campaigns in the community and public engagement. Such legislative
approaches help to minimize corporal punishment to children.
Provision of excellent care and the appropriate education in early life: this is essential
during the preschool enrichment and family involvement to improve the quality of care to
children through accreditation and licensing.
Promotion of child’ healthy development and enhancing parental skills: this approach
involves educating parents on appropriate parenting skills and child’s relationship advances to
enhance healthier primary care through behavioral training programs to the parents.
Intervention to prevent future risk: This helps to reduce the harm of neglect exposure and
abuse. Also, the strategy prevents behavioral problems and future risk of violence involvement
(Prinz, 2016).
Psychosocial Impact
According to the current research, child abuse has a significant impact on the children
and all the involved depressed inpatients. The act of child abuse leads to early onset of
psychiatrist issues, substance abuse, and increased mental illnesses. Child abuse affects the
children psychologically making them vulnerable to the extent of experiencing suicidal thoughts.
The result of a study carried out by the authors and investigators of the University of Alberta
showed that there were several clinical trials performed due to the impact of child’s mental
health and sexual abuse which caused severe trauma to the victims (Stein et al, 2015).
Child abuse leads to life-long psychological, emotional and physical conditions. The
physical wound heals, but the effect of early childhood trauma, emotional, social and physical

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health can be far much damaged leading to future long life consequences. According to the
sociologist research, some parents physically neglect their male children, and this leads them
increased violence in boys during the adolescent period. Scientists from the World Health
Organization (WHO) revealed that an implication deficit in some late developing parts of the
child’s brain after abuse. Child’s maltreatment is a major risk factor towards poor mental health
results in the future of a person (Schuch et al, 2015).

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Reference
Ajilian Abbasi, M., Saeidi, M., Khademi, G., Hoseini, B. L., & Emami Moghadam, Z. (2015).
Child Maltreatment in the World: A Review Article. International Journal of Pediatrics,
3(1.1), 353-365.
Bartlett, J. D., Kotake, C., Fauth, R., & Easterbrooks, M. A. (2017). Intergenerational
transmission of child abuse and neglect: Do maltreatment type, perpetrator, and
substantiation status matter?. Child Abuse & Neglect, 63, 84-94.
Fortson, B. L., Klevens, J., Merrick, M. T., Gilbert, L. K., & Alexander, S. P. (2016). Preventing
child abuse and neglect: A technical package for policy, norm, and programmatic
activities.
Keddell, E. (2015). The ethics of predictive risk modelling in the Aotearoa/New Zealand child
welfare context: Child abuse prevention or neo-liberal tool?. Critical Social Policy, 35(1),
69-88.
Prinz, R. J. (2016). Parenting and family support within a broad child abuse prevention strategy:
Child maltreatment prevention can benefit from public health strategies. Child abuse &
neglect, 51, 400.
Schuch, H. S., dos Santos Costa, F., Torriani, D. D., Demarco, F. F., & Goettems, M. L. (2015).
Oral health‐related quality of life of schoolchildren: impact of clinical and psychosocial
variables. International journal of paediatric dentistry, 25(5), 358-365.
Stein, D. J., Koen, N., Donald, K. A., Adnams, C. M., Koopowitz, S., Lund, C., ... & Stern, M.
(2015). Investigating the psychosocial determinants of child health in Africa: the
Drakenstein Child Health Study. Journal of neuroscience methods, 252, 27-35.