Childhood experiences have a profound impact on everyone’s future. Both good and bad occurrences will have serious influence on what kind of individual someone is going to be. Personal qualities and characteristics, as well as social skills, are dependent on childhood occurrences and their impact on development.
What’s even more important, behaviour and conduct are shaped up by interactions with others during the childhood years (hence having a role model becomes so critical for all young individuals).
Having a positive foundation during childhood is one of the most important factors that contribute to a person’s skills and individual talents. Parents need to be extremely particular when it comes to the environment that their child is growing up in. Children must be given enough attention and love to fully grow and develop.
As technology and economic instability blanket each family, however, the attention to giving children a safe and nurturing environment becomes overshadowed by other issues. Oftentimes, due to vast reasons, a child may even experience abuse and negligence from parents or relatives. This kind of physical abuse can have a profound impact on the future development of an individual, especially when it happens at such a fragile age.
How exactly does physical abuse affect a person’s future? The following overview will outline some of the most important consequences.
Physical Abuse: An Overview
By definition, physical abuse is any physical act that may result in injury or hurt.
Most often, acts of physical abuse are done repeatedly and are either intentional or unintentional. Some may mistakenly treat abuse as a normal punishment given to a child due to misbehaviour. Punishments can be classified as abuse when done repeatedly and accompanied by other forms of maltreatment like negligence and emotional abuse.
The Statistics
Statistics show that child abuse in the US happens once every 10 seconds. A single abuse report may even include multiple children.
Physical abuse is most common with 28 percent of the reported cases involving this kind of maltreatment. Emotional, sexual abuse and physical or emotional neglect follow.
Millions of children are being affected by maltreatment and abuse. And unfortunately, the United States is one of the industrialized nations that have the worst abuse records.
In 2012, four to five children died each day as a result of abuse and neglect. The figures are based solely on reported cases and they don’t include child abuse cases that haven’t gone through one of the responsible state agencies. More than 70 percent of the abused children were aged 2 or even younger. Eighty percent of them were found to be ineligible to kindergarten yet due to their age. Most shockingly, nearly 80 percent of the abuse cases involved either one of the parents.
Physical Abuse during Childhood and Adult Health
For the past three decades, several studies have proven how child abuse is related to mental illness in later life. Although several other factors can contribute to the negative impact of these issues, the link is considered to be clear and intact.
The most common disorders that result from child abuse include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, depression, dissociation, dissociative identity disorder, bipolar, schizophrenia, eating disorders and personality disorders. These are all very serious conditions that affect one’s life in the long run. In a worst-case scenario, an individual that has been abused as a child may experience multiple psychological conditions at once.
If any of these are experienced, then it’s highly likely that the child in question will require some kind of intervention help such as therapy. There are all sorts of pediatric therapy services out there, and often it is a case of finding the right kind for each individual case and making sure that the child receives the help they are looking for. That can help them to live their lives a lot more fully later on, and it is vital that this is therefore carried out as early as possible for their benefit.
Harvard researchers carried out a study to figure out how physical abuse during childhood could prime the brain for psychological conditions in the future. The researchers worked with 200 volunteers aged 18 to 25. Only individuals that had suffered from abuse and neglect during childhood were accepted as volunteers.
Of all volunteers, 25 percent had suffered from major depression during a certain point of their life. Seven percent had been diagnosed with PTSD. In the case of volunteers that had suffered from three or more types of maltreatment during childhood years, however, the prevalence of depression was 53 percent and that of PTSD was 40 percent.
Brain scans showed that the childhood trauma had left its mark. Regardless of their mental health status, all of the volunteers had an average six percent reduction in the volume of the two parts of the hippocampus (the part of the brain associated with memories) and a four percent average reduction in the volume of the subiculum and presubiculum (the parts of the brain that have an impact on addictions and working memory).
It was previously suggested that the stress associated to childhood abuse could potentially damage the hippocampus and affect a person’s ability to handle stress in a productive way later on in life. The Harvard study confirms just how profound the impact of abuse is and how it can continue affecting the lives of individual decades after the maltreatment has ended.
Hope for the Survivors
New studies are shedding some light on the treatment possibilities for the survivors of childhood abuse.
A January 2015 study suggests that personal mastery could effectively buffer the negative consequences of childhood sexual abuse in women. Personal mastery is a great possibility for effective stress management and it can be used to buffer the long-term consequences of sexual abuse suffered during childhood.
When provided with the right type of support, the brain of an abuse survivor can change significantly and even “heal” completely.
An interesting study was published in the Journal of Preventive Medicine. The extensive study involved nearly 2,160 volunteers who were asked to describe their experiences with childhood abuse. A fourth of the participants reported three or more types of adverse childhood experiences. A third of these individuals suffered from at least one stress-related medical condition (depression, chronic pain or migraines).
The risk of such conditions, however, was 50 percent lower among the childhood abuse survivors that had learned how to live in the present moment and be mindful regardless of childhood experiences. Mindfulness training resulted in better sleep patterns and better functioning (both physiological and psychological).
Parents and other caregivers may not be able to see the effect of abuse immediately. As an abused child grows older, however, the signs of instability may start to show. Physical marks may be gone but the memories and emotional impact will be there forever. About 67 percent of adult drug users were abused and neglected as a child. Almost 50 percent of those in prison experienced the same. Abused children are more likely to be involved in criminal activity. These are only a few of the common child abuse effects. America, we need to think twice and give high priority to this issue!
Wilma Derksen
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