Child maltreatment

  • Dr. Daniel Shaw

    Dr. Daniel Shaw

    Dr. Daniel Shaw is the Director of the Center for Parents and Children and the Pitt Parents and Children Laboratory. He also serves as Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, with joint appointments in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, the School of Education, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and Center for Social and Urban Research.

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  • Alice Phillips

    Mental health and care-experienced young people: are our mental health support services appealing and accessible?

    Children in care are much more likely to experience mental health problems than young people in the general population. Early life experiences, such as abuse, neglect, parental drug-use or violence likely play a major part in this. So too could the instability that is often inherent in the care system.

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  • ACEs boy

    ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences

    Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are defined as situations that lead to an elevated risk of children and young people experiencing damaging impacts on their health and other social outcomes across the life course.

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  • January 2021 – The Bridge

    This issue of The Bridge features summaries of recent child and adolescent mental health research. I hope you enjoy reading about this excellent work which improves our understanding of a wide range of conditions and informs mental health care for young people.

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  • Can childcare attendance reduce externalising behaviour in children exposed to adversity?

    Childcare attendance has been proposed as a public health initiative to help close the developmental gap between children from disadvantaged families and their wealthier peers.1,2 Now, Marie-Pier Larose and colleagues have investigated whether childcare attendance might modify the association between exposure to family adversity early in life and later externalising behaviour by buffering cognitive function.

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  • Emotional abuse during childhood is linked with differences in brain structure

    Delia Gheorghe and colleagues at the University of Oxford have harnessed data from the UK Biobank to delineate the relationship between adverse experiences and brain structure. The researchers accessed brain imaging data together with retrospective reports of childhood adversity and adulthood partner abuse from more than 6,000 adults (mean age, 62.1 years).

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  • Nigerian young people from parentally deprived backgrounds show enhanced working memory capacity

    Early adverse rearing can impair cognitive functions in all domains. However, those who take an evolutionary–developmental stance propose that there could be adaptive benefits associated with early adverse rearing.

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  • September 2020 – The Bridge

    The month of September is a challenging time for young people, as they start a new school year. September 2020 will be particularly difficult for many, as they must also deal with the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing, as well as the effects of increasing financial pressures on families.

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  • A history of abuse increases the risk of suicide attempts in youth

    Researchers in Belgium and the USA have conducted one of the first investigations into whether a history of various forms of abuse and the presence of mood disorders and psychotic symptoms can predict suicide attempts in psychiatrically hospitalized children.

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  • Alice Miller

    Female Pioneers: Tamsin Ford CBE on psychologist and analyst Alice Miller

    To celebrate International Women’s Day, three ACAMH luminaries shine the spotlight on the female pioneers of child and adolescent psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, they most admire. “Miller stands out because she demonstrated critical thought and was prepared to openly change her stance in the light of her research findings.”

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