Introduction:

The child abuse is a kind of torture that affects the physical as well as mental health of the children. This might refer to any sort of abusive behaviour on the part of the parents, the educators, the caregivers as well as other adolescents. Be it intentional or unintentional, the child abuse lead to a great deal of adverse consequences for the children. The primary kinds of child abuse and ill treatments over the children include physical abuse, sexual abuse, negligence and ignorance and emotional maltreatment (Van der Kolk, 2017). Even when a child is a direct victim of witnessing the family violence, he or she can be claimed to be abused or harassed by the environment that he is in. This research essay deals with the effects of child abuse and how it affects the mental health and the social development of the children.

Discussion:

There are a lot of factors that affect the mental health of the children. According to Pipe, Lamb and Orbach (2013), there are few children who may suffer from chronic outcomes of child abuse. The child abuse can have possible negative consequences in the physical, emotional, psychological, as well as social domains of development of the children.

The children who are exposed to the child abuse, eventually tend to isolate themselves from the society. They often suffer from severe insecurity issues and they dissociate themselves from the attachment of the caregivers. For these children, the parents who should be the primary caregiver, and a source of support and protection, become a possible reason of danger. They do not more feel safe around any elders or any other people of the society. This has a negative effect on their normal development process. The child who is the victim of child abuse find a difficulty to communicate or interact with the other people around him. The children also have a serious problem in maintaining relationships with their friends, peers or other children of the same age. The attachment difficulties that they face ten to remain with them for a prolonged period of time and they often fail to form social and romantic relationships in their later part of life. According to the reports of United States Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, the children who experience negligence or abuse are more likely to develop greater antisocial behaviour and when they grow up, this trait remains which make them more inclined to criminal behaviour in their adulthood (National Institute of Justice, 2017)

The mental growth of these children is also impaired to a great extent. The children who are the victim of child abuse face difficulties in learning. The abuse and the negligence possibly effects their academic results of these kids. According  to Mills et.al., (2013), the children who are ill-treated have lower academic achievement than the other children of his age. Afifi et.al., (2014) also supports this statement by saying that 86 percent of these children have cases of delay in the development of language. This is possibly due to the reason that the children who have been abused segregates themselves from the people around him and does not interact positively. This affects their language development. Not only in the academics, but the children fail to even work properly in their daily lives. Studies have revealed that the child abuse have affected the maths score of the victimized children, along with their intelligence and daily skills (Herrenkohl, et.al., 2013). Due to the traumatic experience, that they face, they find it difficult to associate themselves with their present self and this affects their daily living skills. They find it difficult to concentration the household tasks, or even find it hard to dress themselves.

However as discussed by Pipe, Lamb and Orbach (2013), the most important consequence of child abuse is the mental health problems. The children generally tend to not develop mentally since they cannot connect themselves with the reality. They suffer from mental impairments and problems such as anxieties and depression.  According to Mills et.al., (2013), this kid of mental development problems are called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On analysing the post-traumatic stress among the children, it can be said that they suffer from different other issues which include attention deficit, and conduct disorders. These children tend to have anxiety or mood related problems and the most common reaction of these victimised adolescents to the situations surrounding them include anger. The children who are maltreated tend to remain aloof and tend to show signs of depression which often include the eating disorders, staying all alone, and showing behavioural problems. They generally avoid the places or the events that trigger their suffering associated with the abusive maltreatment. The incident associates them with feelings of terror, horror, guilt or even shame. They remain irritated all the time and show symptoms of mood swings.

In accordance to this, researchers have suggested that the adolescents who are abused or maltreated by the society, tend to have greater suicidal tendencies than the other children of the same age. According to (Miller et.al., 2013), even though all forms of child abuse result in the increased tendencies of suicidal attempts, the rate of adolescent suicidal attempts are higher in the cases of sexual harassment or emotional abuse than the general physical abuse. Analysing this fact stated, it can be said that the incidents of sexual abuse associates the children and the victims with shame. They find it difficult to face the world since in most of the incidents, the society tends to blame the victims and not the convicts. The victims are made responsible for what they experience.

The children generally suffer from a lot of behavioural issues after experiencing any sort of maltreatment.  According to Spinazzola, et.al., (2014), there can be both internal as well as external behavioural issues with these children. The adolescents can either be extremely aggressive and hyper reactive to situations, or they can simply isolate themselves and remain sad. Most often these kinds of behavioural problems are seen in the children who are neglected by their immediate caregiver, and who receive no kind of love or support from their families. In addition to all the suffering and fain, that these victims experience, they often develop aggressive and violent behaviour. The family violence that they are often exposed to, make them more violent in their youth. This is possibly because the children adopt and learn the behaviour that they are exposed to in their childhood. Childhood sexual abuse had been increasing in Canada and according to the Statistical reports of Canadian Government, the females had been facing this kid of child maltreatment and the rates were almost three times greater than men (Pearson, 2019). (The chart has been provided in the appendix).

According to the reports of the National Institute of Justice in United States, the children who are abused and neglected by their family were 11 times more likely to be arrested for the criminal behaviour in their adolescence (National Institute of Justice, 2017). There have been thus been a possible relation between the child abuse and the experiences and the tendency to transform into future juvenile criminals. Even If though there is a sharp differences between the girls and the boy sand how they react to the maltreatments, but they have the possibility of taking revenge of the experiences. The external behaviour of the boys such as greater aggression and hostility make them more prone to bullying others and let the other children, who are their peers, suffer. They are more inclined to treat their peers in a different manner, and go on to abuse or neglect others. The toxic stress environment creates a long lasting damage over their mental health and their individuality or behaviour.

Conclusion:

Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that the child abuse is one of the greatest problems in the society that has a negative effect on both the mental health of the victims as well as their social growth. The children often tend to show behavioural problems and disorders when they are exposed to the pain and suffering of the traumatic experience sin their childhood. Generally the most common reason of this is the negligence of the family and the caregivers, for which the victims and the adolescents tend to isolate themselves from their support. They find it difficult to be socially active and interact with the people surrounding them. This can be reduced if the children are attended to and their mental health problems are listened to. Thus the impacts of child abuse and negligence are very common, but should be eradicated from the society so that the children can live peacefully and can smile through their childhood.

Appendices:

Chart 1: Statistics of Sexual abuse in Canada

Source: Burczycka (2015)

Chart 2: Mental health rates in Canada due to child abuse

Source: Pearson (2019)

References:

Afifi, T. O., MacMillan, H. L., Boyle, M., Taillieu, T., Cheung, K., & Sareen, J. (2014). Child abuse and mental disorders in Canada. Cmaj, 186(9), E324-E332.

Burczycka, M. (2015). Section 1: Profile of Canadian adults who experienced childhood maltreatment. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/14698/01-eng.htm

Herrenkohl, T. I., Hong, S., Klika, J. B., Herrenkohl, R. C., & Russo, M. J. (2013). Developmental impacts of child abuse and neglect related to adult mental health, substance use, and physical health. Journal of family violence, 28(2), 191-199.

Miller, A. B., Esposito-Smythers, C., Weismoore, J. T., & Renshaw, K. D. (2013). The relation between child maltreatment and adolescent suicidal behavior: a systematic review and critical examination of the literature. Clinical child and family psychology review, 16(2), 146-172.

Mills, R., Scott, J., Alati, R., O’Callaghan, M., Najman, J. M., & Strathearn, L. (2013). Child maltreatment and adolescent mental health problems in a large birth cohort. Child abuse & neglect, 37(5), 292-302.

National Institute of Justice. (2017). Pathways Between Child Maltreatment and Adult Criminal Involvement. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/pathways-between-child-maltreatment-and-adult-criminal-involvement

Pearson, C. (2019). The impact of mental health problems on family members. Retrieved 22 November 2019, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-624-x/2015001/article/14214-eng.htm

Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Cederborg, A. C. (Eds.). (2013). Child sexual abuse: Disclosure, delay, and denial. Psychology Press.

Spinazzola, J., Hodgdon, H., Liang, L. J., Ford, J. D., Layne, C. M., Pynoos, R., … & Kisiel, C. (2014). Unseen wounds: The contribution of psychological maltreatment to child and adolescent mental health and risk outcomes. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 6(S1), S18.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). This issue: child abuse & victimization. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), 374-378.