NCJ Number
172301
Date Published
1996
Length
30 pages
Annotation
Child physical abuse (CPA) is a significant concern of child practitioners, and researchers have documented the consequences of CPA, risk factors, and interventions.
Abstract
Certain trends have been identified in recent studies and clinical reports regarding the conceptualization, characteristics, assessment, and treatment of CPA. CPA models are important because of their potential to organize individual findings across studies, identify key processes and factors associated with the emergence of abusive behavior, and evaluate the utility of intervention programs. Some of the more salient variables and processes associated with CPA include child characteristics (health-medical status and temperament-behavior), parental characteristics (childhood history of abuse, personality and psychiatric disturbances, cognitive styles, behavioral functioning, and biological factors, and family system characteristics (coercive parent-child interactions, poor family relationships, and other contextual and social system variables). Consequences of CPA encompass impaired physical functioning, developmental-intellectual deficits, cognitive-attributional deficits, impaired socioemotional functioning and affective symptoms, poor social behavior and academic performance, and long-term adjustment problems. Various intervention and treatment approaches have been studied and implemented that focus on child skills training, day treatment, parent behavioral training and social learning, family-based services, and ecological and contextual interventions, multisystemic interventions. Practical implications of research findings on CPA are discussed, and unresolved issues are noted. 217 references