Survivors of childhood abuse: their reported experiences with professional help.

This article analyzes the self-reports of 384 adults who responded to a survey of people abused physically, sexually, or emotionally by family members in childhood. Most of the respondents sought help as adults from social workers and other mental health professionals for the long-term effects of their abusive experiences. This article analyses the reports of their help-seeking experiences against a backdrop of the reports of clinicians and researchers on working with survivors, as reported in the literature.

Responding to children's disclosure of familial abuse: what survivors tell us.

This study is based on the reports of 384 adults who were abused physically, sexually, and/or emotionally in childhood by family members. It describes the survivors' attempts, as children, to get help by disclosing the abuse to someone who might intervene; those who did not disclose explain their reasons. The results indicate that disclosure usually did not bring an end to the abuse, and that little action was taken to control the perpetrator, even after disclosure took place.

Teaching child and adolescent psychiatry to family medicine trainees: a pilot experience.

Objective: To develop learning objectives for teaching child psychiatry to family medicine trainees and to evaluate the best method of teaching these objectives.

Method: For this descriptive study, knowledge, attitude, and skill objectives were presented to trainees at the start of a 6-month rotation, and an evaluation mechanism was developed based on the learning objectives. The method of instruction in each of the training locations was described independently by the child psychiatry consultant and attending family physician.

The mental health of children in foster care: a comparison with community and clinical samples.

Objective: To determine whether the psychiatric profile of children in foster care is more similar to clinical or community profiles.

Method: Caregiver and teacher ratings of DSM-III-R externalizing and internalizing symptoms were collected for 3 groups of children: children in foster care, children assessed at a children's mental health centre, and a community sample.

Results: Children in foster care approximated the numbers and types of symptoms of the clinical sample.

Psychiatric disorders of children "in care": methodology and demographic correlates.

This paper examines psychiatric symptoms and disorders in children in the care of a Children's Aid Society. Youth, caretaker and teacher scores on the Standardized Clinical Information System questionnaire were correlated with demographic and maltreatment data gathered from the files of children from a Children's Aid Society. Mean externalizing and internalizing scores for the study group were significantly elevated above the norm on the youth, caretaker and teacher reports; externalizing more so than internalizing.