Adult Survivors Understanding the Long-Term Effects of Traumatic Childhood Experiences

By John Range

Experiencing abuse and neglect in childhood can lead to adverse outcomes in adulthood.

Adult survivors of untreated child abuse often suffer a range of long-term detrimental effects that adversely affect their functioning in numerous areas of their lives. Unfortunately, the enduring impact of chronic abuse in childhood is not well understood. This book is focused on increasing understanding of the long-term effects of traumatic childhood experiences from both psychological and physiological perspectives. Additionally, this book explores whether pathology frequently seen in adult survivors is a direct or secondary effect of their abuse. Along with scientific and theoretical text-based data, solicited written narratives by an adult survivor of childhood physical, sexual, and psychological abuse are analyzed utilizing hermeneutic methodology with elements of grounded theory to discover relevant connections between the fields of neuroscience, memory research, attachment theory, and trauma research. The relevance of findings of the diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is discussed, and the implications for clinical practice are explored.

• Language: English
• Publisher: vincenzo nappi
• Release date: Aug 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201138752

Book preview

Chapter I Introduction

Considering the tremendous long-term negative impact on both the mental and physical health of the population, and the tremendous individual and societal cost to remedy the resulting difficulties, child abuse and the dysfunction which gives rise to it comprise the most serious public health problem in America today. As such, the topic of child abuse is naturally of interest to therapists and other mental health workers who are committed to helping alleviate the suffering of those victimized as children. Societal attitudes in America towards the perpetrators of abuse have steadily become more progressive, with more serious penalties now being assigned to those found to have abused children physically or sexually. However, the victims of such abuse, especially those who have reached adulthood with their trauma untreated, are not always viewed sympathetically or accurately by those whom they seek treatment from.

Survivors of childhood abuse, like other traumatized people, are frequently misdiagnosed and mistreated in the mental health system. Because of the number and complexity of their symptoms, their treatment is often fragmented and incomplete. Survivors of childhood abuse often accumulate many different diagnoses before the underlying problem of a complex post-traumatic syndrome is recognized.

Adult survivors of traumatic childhood experiences often suffer serious long-term effects that may not be understood, even by mental-health workers, as being related to their prior abuse. Not only are their symptoms complex, but they are also often extremely distressing, both to the survivor and to others with whom they come in contact. The purpose of this research is primarily focused on achieving a better understanding of the long-term effects of chronic childhood abuse. Besides, this research seeks to explore whether the disturbing pathology which is frequently seen in adult survivors of childhood abuse is the direct result of their traumatic childhood experiences, or whether such pathology should be understood as a secondary effect resulting from the impact of the trauma on their subsequent development, or whether both types of effects occur.

The extent of the problem

The Children‘s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides national data collection and analysis of data on child abuse and neglect from data that is submitted annually by state Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies. Most states recognize four main types of child maltreatment: physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect. In the Children‘s Bureau‘s report Child Maltreatment 2008, they provided disturbing statistics on the prevalence and severity of childhood abuse in the United States. During 2008, an estimated 772000 children were found to be victims of abuse or neglect. Of these, an estimated 1740 children died as a result. Children who were in the age group of birth to 1 year had the highest rate of victimization, with infant boys (under 1 year) having the highest rate of fatalities. Altogether, more than three- quarters (79.8 %) of the children who died as a result of their maltreatment were under 4 years of age. The rate of victimization decreased as children got older. Nevertheless, almost a quarter (23.6 %) of all victims of abuse and neglect were between 4 and 7 years of age, and an additional 18.9 % were between 8 and 11.

Young children are dependent on their parents or primary caretakers, so it is not surprising that the report found that approximately 80 % of the perpetrators of abuse and neglect were the child‘s parents, and another 6.5 % were other relatives of the victim. Of offending parents, approximately 90 % were the biological parent of the victim, 4.4 % were step-parents and 0.7 % were adoptive parents. What may be surprising is that considering all types of maltreatment, a larger percentage of perpetrators were women than men (56.2 % compared to 42.6 %) and nearly 39 % of victims were mistreated by their mother acting alone.

Impact on physical health

Such statistics are naturally alarming, but they do not provide the whole picture when it comes to understanding the negative impact of child maltreatment. The largest research study ever conducted on the long-term effects of childhood abuse and neglect, it found an astonishing correlation between maltreatment during childhood and premature death or serious medical illness in later life. The study, which is continuing, was based on comprehensive interviews of more than 17000 HMO members. Researchers asked participants detailed questions about their negative childhood experiences in 10 different categories which were divided under three main topics: abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. Each category of abuse which was reported counted as one, although there may have been many incidents in that category. The population included in the study was predominantly white, middle class, and college-educated and was equally divided between men and women. The average age of the participants was 57. After completing the interviews, researchers looked for correlations between the participants‘ negative childhood experiences and their risk factors for disease, and their degree of health and well-being in adulthood.

The results were stunning both the prevalence of maltreatment and adversity and their impact on health and well-being 40 to 50 years later. The researchers found that adverse experiences in childhood were very common only 33 percent had a score of 0, meaning that none of the categories had applied to them. More important, adversity usually came as a package deal if one category (say, alcoholism) had been present, there was an 87-percent probability that at least one other (say, sexual or