Aim: We examined how gut feelings of child health care physicians' (CHCPs) contribute to the development of a suspicion of child abuse, how they act upon this suspicion and what barriers they experience in their management. To gain insight into the youth health care chain, we compared the diagnostic reasoning and management regarding this issue by CHCPs and family physicians (FPs).
Methods: Three focus groups, 20 CHCPs, thematic content analysis.
Results: A gut feeling acted as an early alert to look for the triggering cue(s), by observing more closely and asking relevant questions. CHCPs struggled to distinguish whether the situation involved child abuse or a lack of parenting skills, and how to communicate their concerns with parents. They tried to motivate parents to improve the situation, avoiding the term child abuse and considered involving the Child Abuse Counselling and Reporting Centre (CACRC) a measure of last resort only.
Conclusion: As with FPs, gut feelings support CHCPs in becoming attentive to child abuse and to situations which can lead to child abuse. The next step, discussing their suspicion with the parents, is a difficult one, and the CACRC might actually help to make this step easier.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/apa.15736 | DOI Listing |
PLoS One
January 2025
Institute for Human Development, Aga Khan University, Nairobi, Kenya.
Introduction: Children growing up in arid and semi-arid regions of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face heightened risks, often resulting in poor developmental outcomes. In Kenya, the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) exhibit the lowest health and developmental indicators among children. Despite these risks, some children grow up successfully and overcome the challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Orthop Surg Glob Res Rev
January 2025
From the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Foot and Ankle Research and Innovation Laboratory (FARIL), Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (Flaherty, Ghandour, Mirochnik, Lucaciu, Nassour, Kwon, and Ashkani-Esfahani); the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (Kwon, Harris, and Ashkani-Esfahani); and the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Division Foot and Ankle, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (Kwon and Ashkani-Esfahani).
Background: Approximately 25% of children in the United States experience child abuse or neglect, 18% of whom are physically abused. Physicians are often in a position to differentiate accidental trauma from physical child abuse. Therefore, the aim of this study was to review recent literature for risk factors associated with physical child abuse.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
January 2025
Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, Social Science Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States of America.
Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a significant public health concern, and there is a lack of universal, evidence-based primary prevention interventions that extend beyond a focus solely on children. Parents remain a consistently underutilized target for primary prevention efforts aimed at mitigating CSA despite their unique relationship and close proximity to their children. CSA risk is not confined to any specific demographic, and its effects on affected children are well-documented, significantly impacting numerous dimensions of their wellbeing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInj Prev
January 2025
Department of Pediatrics, Children's Mercy Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, USA.
Objective: Community context influences children's risk for injury. We aimed to measure the explanatory capacity of two ZIP code-level measures-the Child Opportunity Index V.3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrauma Violence Abuse
January 2025
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Although sexual violence (SV) has been hypothesized to increase shame, the relationship between SV and shame has not been quantified. Addressing this gap is essential for developing targeted interventions for survivors, as shame is a transdiagnostic risk factor for numerous forms of psychopathology and a barrier to service-seeking. This meta-analysis first examines whether individuals exposed to SV demonstrate higher shame than individuals who reported no SV exposure.
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