Traumatic consequences of child abuse

Pages: 164-170
Bhagat Singh and Anita Moral (Department of Psychology, Sri Varshney (PG) College, Aligarh, U.P.)

Child abuse is a state in which a child (below the age of 18 years) is maltreated physically, emotionally, sexually and economically. These various types of child abuse lead a child in many long term traumatic stages. Children may face trauma that threatens their integrity, safety, level of confidence, self-esteem, social life and so forth. The effects of trauma are broad, encompassing fear, anger, sadness and humiliation. It is a globally prevalent phenomenon. The women and child development ministry-survey revealed that 53.22% of children reported having faced one or more forms of sexual abuse. It was also found that over 50% children were subjected to one or the other form of physical abuse and every second child reported of facing emotional abuse. In 83% of the cases parents were the abusers. In a number of joint studies conducted by UNICEF and the Ministry of Labour, 75% of the children reported treatment by staff as bad and 91.7% reported provisions of necessities as bad. In Mumbai 75.4 % reported bad treatment by staff and 53.2 reported that provisions were poor. One million children are trafficked into prostitution, in Asia every year; child abuse affects children in a number of ways, such as higher rates of psychiatric and psychological disorders as PTSD, depression, suicidal tendency, antisocial behaviour and so forth. Though there are certain acts as ‘National Policy on Children, 1974’; ‘Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 and recently government passed ‘The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012’, but due to lack of awareness and proper implementation in these acts, cases of child abuse are increasing day by day. So the gravity of the situation demands that the issue of child abuse be placed on the national agenda.