Neglect and Abuse: Everybody Pays

The consequences of childhood abuse are usually calculated in terms of the damage done to the health and development of its victims. Impairment to mental health in adulthood and the tendency to mistreat others are well scrutinized.

But in a paper just published in Child Abuse and Neglect David Zielinski examines the implications for socioeconomic well-being – the greater likelihood that damaged children will be poor, unemployed and in greater need of state-subsidized health care.

In what is described in the US as the first comprehensive study of the long-term socioeconomic effects of abuse and neglect, Zielinski shows that, on way or another, childhood maltreatment inflicts significant monetary costs on the individual and on society.

Read more online at: http://www.preventionaction.org/research/medicaid/5193