The psychologic-detrimental effects of child abuse: a case study

The abuse is an highly traumatic event in child’s life that may compromise his/her regular psychosocial development and have numerous repercussions in the victim’s life. In fact, as the Italian Society of neuropsychiatric and Adolescent states: «Any form of violence is always an attack confusing and destabilizing to the personality during the child’s education, in many cases it causes serious short, medium and long-term conse- quences of the growth process, especially in cases in which the experience takes on a traumatic character». Starting from these observations, we have decided to explore these issues, with the aim of the research to verify what consequences the abuse has on the child’s life, in order also to provide input regarding forensic evaluations. Therefore 30 children of both sexes, sent in care, the Juvenile Courts of a region of southern Italy, a service center and accredited Affiliated Offices of Juvenile Justice, to have suffered abuse and neglect, was administe- red a questionnaire after obtaining the consent of the parents, the Los Angeles Symptom Checklist, which has the function to verify, in a subject exposed to trauma, the presence of psychodiagnostic signs attributable to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 18 of the thirty children examined were found signs psychodiagnostic attributable to this Disorder. The type of abuse most represented is that of psychological profile, refers to situations of extended parental and marital conflict. The legal medical and forensic evaluations, about the child abuse have therefore need to be supported by tools increasingly reliable.