What is the most likely reason children’s psychological disorders are neglected?

For children, affectional neglect may have devastating consequences, including failure to thrive, developmental delay, hyperactivity, aggression, depression, low self-esteem, running away from home, substance abuse, and a host of other emotional disorders. These children feel unloved and unwanted. They may strive to please others, or they may misbehave to receive the attention they crave. They may withdraw from people and appear uncaring and indifferent. They may be afraid of emotional closeness and may shun intimacy in relationships. They are at risk for emotional problems throughout the rest of their lives. The degree of neglect and the individual vulnerability apparently affect the magnitude of the consequences.

Severe cases of neglect are generally easy to spot (e.g., when the child’s development is grossly delayed or shows evidence of failure to thrive), but more subtle examples are harder to detect. Emotional neglect should be suspected if the primary care practitioner observes a relative lack of spontaneous, positive, parent-child interactions in her or his office; if the parent seems uninformed and apathetic about the child’s development and behavior; or if the child is exhibiting signs of emotional distress without an obvious cause. Questions about daily routines and sources of support to the parent should precede any direct queries into the parent-child relationship. Encouraging the parent to describe the child’s positive attributes and focusing the discussion on these strengths can serve as an opening to raising matters of concern. It is important for the parent to hear these concerns directly from the practitioner. Vague, general, or indirect comments should be avoided, and specific recommendations should be made regarding the child’s need for more sustained and positive interactions with the parent. How important the parent is to the child, and how vital it is for the parent to receive more support from his or her social network so as to be more emotionally available to the child also are important issues to emphasize. Most neglectful parents feel isolated and unsupported in their own families and feel that their own emotional needs are not being met. Encouraging the parent to talk directly with the physician about her or his view of parenting is another way of opening up the discussion.

Often it is helpful to obtain additional information from other family members, particularly other caregivers. This information enables the practitioner to assess the availability of emotional support to the parent and child from within the family system. Finally, whenever possible, a home visit and a family interview should be conducted. This interview may require the services of an experienced clinical social worker, who can help make the decision to contact CPS should emotional neglect be substantiated.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781416033707000109

ACEs: Definitions, measurement, and prevalence☆

Katie A. Ports, ... Angie S. Guinn, in Adverse Childhood Experiences, 2020

Child neglect items

Both physical and emotional neglect were measured. The Physical Neglect subscale of the CTQ (Bernstein et al., 1994) was used to define whether someone experienced childhood physical neglect. This subscale comprises five items that are rated on a 1 (“never”) to 5 (“very often”) Likert scale. The responses to items 8 and 11 (Table 1) were reverse coded to match the negative valence of the remaining items. The responses to all five items were then summed together to estimate a physical neglect score, which ranges from 5 to 25. Individuals with a score of 10 or more fall in the moderate to extreme range. Individuals retrospectively reporting the moderate to extreme level of childhood physical neglect were considered to be exposed to physical neglect.

Similarly, the Emotional Neglect subscale of the CTQ (Bernstein et al., 1994) was used to define the presence of child emotional neglect. This subscale also comprises five items that are rated on a 1 (“never”) to 5 (“very often”) Likert scale. The responses to these items were summed together to compute an emotional neglect score, which ranges from 5 to 25. Individuals with a score of 15 or more fall in the moderate to extreme range. Individuals retrospectively reporting the moderate to extreme level of child emotional neglect were considered to be exposed to emotional neglect.

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Considerations for expanding the definition of ACEs

Tracie O. Afifi, in Adverse Childhood Experiences, 2020

Introduction

Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, violence against a mother, parental divorce, household member having problems with substances, household member having problems with mental illness, and incarceration of a household member comprise the 10 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) assessed in the original ACE Study (Dube et al., 2003; Felitti et al., 1998). This is not a comprehensive list of adverse experiences that can occur in childhood and, therefore, researchers, clinicians, and others working in the field have added and removed experiences while still using the term ACEs. In this chapter, an overview of the original ACEs, inconsistencies in defining ACEs in research, and ACEs from a global perspective are provided. Directions for future research, including recommendations for expanding the definition of ACEs and implications on policy and practice of an expanded ACEs list, are also discussed.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128160657000033

The Long-Lasting Neurobiological Scars of Early-Life Stress: Implications for the Neurobiology of Depression Which reason is the most likely explanation for why children's psychological disorders are neglected quizlet?

Which of the following is the most likely reason why children's psychological disorders are neglected? Most children do not exhibit symptoms entirely consistent with those of adults.

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