Psychological Effects Of Child Maltreatment

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Child maltreatment has been extensively studied in the past decades and it has shown to cause significant risks for both psychological and biological development. Although these risks arise during childhood, they often initiate a negative developmental cascade that continues throughout the life span . Because of the pervasive effect child maltreatment promotes, research in this field has a critical role in both exploring which developmental processes child maltreatment influences and for improving the quality of clinical, legal and policy-making decisions for maltreated children . Research in child maltreatment, however, has also the role of informing how to develop interventions which meet the specific psychological needs of maltreated children …show more content…

When studying developmental effects of child maltreatment, however, one must be aware that they are dependent on factors such as: relationship with perpetrator, severity of maltreatment, recency, chronicity, developmental stage of maltreated child at start of maltreatment and sex of child …show more content…

Studies focusing on self-compassion and child maltreatment, are hardly generalizable to the entire child maltreatment population. The studies by respectively focused on teens seeking for treatment for substance use and on adolescents in Child Protective Service who were in either foster care, grouped care, independent living, or living with family-of-origin and who did not show severe psychopathology. In order to generalize the results to the broad population, a more varied sample including resilient individuals who suffered from child maltreatment should be used. Another reason why the current research is not generalizable to the broad population is that neither studies controlled for sub-variables of child maltreatment chronicity, type of maltreatment, age of first maltreatment event etc.. Furthermore, new research should focus on self-compassion in resilient individuals who experienced child maltreatment in order to establish if the relationship between self-compassion and mental health is also present in this sample. This knowledge will prove useful in the development of intervention and prevention programs, as it will help establishing if self-compassion is a construct of resilience. Further research is needed to establish if self-compassion is a resilient factor, or if it is a intervention preventing the negative effects of