Childhood Abuse -- Internationally prevalent
Dec 3, 2012
MARIJE STOLTENBORGH of Leiden University, Netherlands, has produced another meta-analysis of published studies,
this time looking at the international prevalence of childhood emotional abuse. Those familiar with my site will know I have discussed prevalence there [LINK].
Ms Stoltenborgh previously published an article reporting a meta-analysis of studies looking at the prevalene of childhood sexjual abuse in different countries [LINK].
In that article, Stoltenborgh reported a comprehensive meta-analysis that combined prevalence figures of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) reported in 217 publications published between 1980 and 2008, including 331 independent samples with a total of 9,911,748 participants. The overall estimated CSA prevalence was 127/1000 in self-report studies and 4/1000 in informant studies.
Self-reported CSA was more common among female (180/1000) than among male participants (76/1000). Lowest rates for both girls (113/1000) and boys (41/1000) were found in Asia, and highest rates were found for girls in Australia (215/1000) and for boys in Africa (193/1000). The results of the meta-analysis confirm that CSA is a global problem of considerable extent, but also show that methodological issues drastically influence the self-reported prevalence of CSA.
In the most recent paper, looking at childhood emotional abuse [LINK] Stoltenborgh and colleagues present the results of a comprehensive meta-analysis combining prevalence figures of child emotional abuse reported in 29 studies, including 46 independent samples with a total of 7,082,279 participants. The overall estimated prevalence was 3/1,000 for studies using informants and 363/1,000 for studies using self-report measures of child emotional abuse. Procedural factors again, as for studies of CSA seem to exert a greater influence on the prevalence of childhood emotional abuse than sample characteristics and definitional issues, without fully explaining the vast variation of prevalence rates reported in individual studies.
The researchers conclude that child emotional abuse is a universal problem affecting the lives of millions of children all over the world, which is in sharp contrast with the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Going by self-reported prevalence rates, and as discussed on my website, there are good reasons to rely on these figures, CEM likely occurs at three times the rate of CSA and, again please refer to my website, CEM can have effects as severe, if not in some cases more severe, as CSA -- impacts, for individual clients and populations alike, likely to be under-estimated by many clinicians and policy makers and service planners.