Causes and risk factors
Child abuse can be in any form physical, emotional or sexual. This harm can be done either by the parents, some family friends or relatives or even an unknown person. Certain factors add up for the misbehavior. Family conflicts, financial loss, alcoholism, any mental and physical illness, any substance abuse etc can provoke a person get involved in such deliberate harm.
Clinical presentation:
Physical abuse can be in form of giving burns marks to the child, hitting or biting the child, using sticks or scales to punish them, forcing them to do labor/domestic work, or even poisoning the child. Shaking or abusing the child also comes under this category. Emotional abuse consists of critising or cursing the child, unnecessary yelling or scolding them. Teasing the child. Negligence in regards to food, housing, health care ,Not giving proper attention to the child or neglecting the medical care of the child. Kissing or holding or fondling a child in a sexual manner, sending obscene messages or making obscene comments, showing pornographic movies to the child, etc constitute of sexual abuse. Not necessary that there will be visible marks of injury on the body, the mental makeup of the child can also be disturbed. It can lead to changes in the behavior and emotional make up of the child.
Treatment:
Psychotherapy plays a major role in this. It comprises of counseling and interpersonal therapy along with child and parent psychotherapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy has found to be effective in such cases. Support and care by family and friends will help the patient to cope up with the complaints. Indulgence in positive recreational activity can also help the child to cope up the emotional disturbance. The needs to be initiated not only to the victim (the suffering child) but also to the offender. The offender needs to be handled by social measures. If needed legal punishments must be imposed on the offender. Child abuse is a widespread social problem across the border which needs a comprehensive mechanism to put it to an end.
Other Modes of treatment:
Certain other modes of treatment can also be helpful in coping up the symptoms. Taking into consideration the symptoms in holistic way, homoeopathy can offer a good aid for the relief of the symptoms.
Facts and Figures:
According to a study conducted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, around two third of children in India are physically abused, and around half are sexually or emotionally abused. Most of these children do not report the matter to anyone.
In 2005 United States statistics show that 12 out of every 1000 children up to the age of 18 were found to be victims of maltreatment.
