Child abuse treatment failures reveal need for redefinition of the problem.
This article seeks to prove that current modalities for treating child abuse are not solving the problem because many high risk and abusive families do not get help, and because these identified families represent only a small part of the population at risk for child abuse. The paper presents statistics obtained by the Cleveland Parenting Program for the Prevention of Child Abuse on the numbers of high risk parents who refuse treatment, and others who fail to profit when therapy is undertaken: sociopathic/addictive, grossly immature or infantile, and mildly retarded/infantile personalities. Psychotic, moderately or severely retarded, and hard core premeditated abusers were also considered untreatable with the Parenting Program modality. The article goes on to delineate a larger population that is at risk of child abuse because of the parents' early experiences of violence as well as other emotional and educational deprivations. The article concludes with the argument that primary prevention of child abuse can really only be addressed effectively in the context of programs designed to help both groups: people identified as being at risk, and the larger, unidentified, at risk population.
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000517:prevention & control*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology; D010352:Patient Dropouts; D011203:Poverty; D011322:Primary Prevention / Q000379:methods; D012306:Risk; D014754:Violence