Re: Silent prevalence

["Daryl Higgins" <dhiggins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Moshe,

The problem with conducting routine child abuse screening programs is that 
I don't think we are able to accurately screen for abuse in the context of 
normal school populations, unless we conduct abuse-focused investigative 
interviews.

The problem with "check - lists" based on symptoms is that there are no 
symptoms that I know of that accurately or exclusively indicate abuse or 
neglect.  Many of these refer to chronic patterns of behaviour, and there 
are no specific symptoms that are exclusively diagnostic of sexual abuse, 
or any other type of abuse.  All symptoms or behaviours need to be 
understood in their context - and this is why attempts to perform routine 
screening of children is problematic.  The best you could do is identity 
children who may be "high risk" - but then you would still be faced with 
the problem of how to proceed further once you've identified these 'high 
risk' children.

This issue has a long history in relation to sexual abuse.  Researchers in 
the 1980s were hopeful of finding certain symptoms to indicate sexual 
abuse.  However, there is an absence of any consensus of predictive or 
diagnostic criteria for sexual abuse, or even a sexual abuse-specific 
syndrome of symptoms (see Kendall-Tackett, Williams, & Finkelhor , 1993. 
Impact of sexual abuse on children: A review and synthesis of recent 
empirical studies. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 164-180).  There are two 
problems:  (a) identifying symptoms that distinguish between child 
maltreatment and other sources of stress (e.g., family dysfunction) or 
pathology (e.g., ADD),  and (b) identifying symptoms that distinguish 
between the various types of abuse and neglect.  In a review I have just 
conducted, I have not found evidence for the presence of symptoms that are 
consistently unique to each form of child maltreatment.


__________________________________________

Dr Daryl Higgins
Lecturer
School of Psychology
Deakin University - Geelong Campus
Pigdons Rd, Geelong, VIC, 3217
AUSTRALIA

Ph.     +61 3 5227 2924
Fax.    +61 3 5227 2021

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