Child Maltreatment: Legal and Mental Health Issues (From Children, Mental Health, and the Law, P 79-101, 1984, N Dickon Reppucci, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-109808)

• NCJ Number: 109810
• Author(s): M S Rosenberg; R D Hunt
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 23 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter presents an overview of legal and mental health issues in child abuse and neglect, including statutory definitions, the legal response, and etiology and intervention.

Abstract

Both State statute and research definitions of child maltreatment and its various manifestations have been plagued by ambiguity that impedes identification and requires discretionary interpretation. The law's response to child maltreatment has been an evolving attempt to balance the interest of the State, parent, and child. The response of mental health professionals and social scientists has been to increase understanding of the phenomenon and to develop and evaluate treatments. In general, intervention strategies have been designed to change the parent and be therapeutic and/or educational in nature, to reduce environmental stress associated with situational factors conducive to maltreatment, and to ameliorate the effects of maltreatment on the victim. Outcome evaluations of such interventions have produced mixed findings and have been plagued by methodological problems. Child maltreatment is a complex, multiply determined phenomenon that will require collaboration across legal, mental health, and social science professions to generate meaningful etiological frameworks, intervention strategies, and justice system responses. 29 footnotes and 64 references.