Correlation of Childhood Psychological Abuse and Neglect With Mental Health in Chinese College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Experience of childhood maltreatment is a major factor affecting adult mental health. The purpose of this study was to understand the association of childhood psychological abuse and neglect with mental health in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online questionnaire survey was conducted from February 21 to March 12, 2020. The participants were 200 students at a university of physical education in Shaanxi Province, China. Participants completed the Child Psychological Abuse and Neglect Scale and the Mental Health Self-Report Questionnaire. Regarding childhood maltreatment experience, 52.5% of respondents screened positive for childhood psychological abuse, 55.8% for psychological neglect, and 43.6% for both. Moreover, 37.6% of participants screened positive for psychological health problems during the pandemic. Childhood psychological abuse and neglect were positively associated with mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. A regression analysis revealed that the reproving dimension of psychological abuse was a risk factor for mental health problems in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Problem of State Violence

When violence occurs, the state has an obligation to respond to and reduce the impacts of it; yet often the state originates, or at least contributes to, the violence. This may occur in a variety of ways, including through the use of force by police, pretrial incarceration at local jails, long periods of incarceration in prisons, or abuse and neglect of people who are incarcerated. This essay explores the role of the state in responding to violence and how it should contribute to reducing violence in communities, as well as in its own operations. Finally, it explores what the future of collaboration between state actors and the community looks like and offers examples of successful power-sharing and co-producing of safety between the state and the public.

Therapeutic interventions employed when working with maltreated children

A number of effective treatments are available for children and young people who have developed various forms of psychological difficulties as a consequence of traumatic experiences. The aim of this paper is to review the therapeutic approaches employed when working with children who have been exposed to various forms of abuse and neglect during their childhood. This paper provides relevant information to psychotherapists and counsellors on new trends in therapy, as well as techniques and possibilities in interventions in this field, not only with respect to traumatised children, but also family members and other caregivers involved in the child’s life. Furthermore, this paper reviews the therapeutic interventions used to treat emotionally, sexually, and physically abused children, neglected children, children who have witnessed domestic violence, and children who have been exposed to multiple forms of abuse.

The Principle of Proportionality, Article 8 of the ECHR and Swedish Care Orders in Cases of Neglect. A Sketch of a Theoretical Framework

This study conducts an analysis of the rights in article 8 of the ECHR and the application of the proportionality principle when Swedish care orders may be regarded as a necessary interference in family life. The study has been based on an interdisciplinary approach. Text documents were studied through socio-legal methods and perspectives, by combining knowledge from legal sources and social sciences research through a content analysis derived from formal and substantive legal certainty. The article concludes that reasoning in Swedish administrative courts should routinely consider proportionality in cases of neglect, and sets out to sketch a theoretical framework for the principle of proportionality in decisions on care orders. The results show that, since decisions in child welfare cases cannot be made completely uniform and predictable, the focus of decisions in social child welfare work must be to satisfy the objectives and values of substantive legal certainty, instead of unrealistically striving for formal legal certainty through equal treatment and predictability. The results also show that, by requiring those who exercise public authority to present their assessments based on proportionality, new demands are made for the quality and efficiency of involuntary out-of-home placements. Child welfare investigations should nowadays include impact assessments that clarify the advantages and disadvantages of the care in relation to the risk of harm from the original home conditions. Abuse and neglect in out-of-home placements will therefore be of growing importance in decisions on care orders in the future.

A Meta-Analysis of Childhood Maltreatment in Relation to Psychopathic Traits

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a mix of traits belonging to four facets: affective (e.g., callous/lack of empathy), interpersonal (e.g., grandiosity), behavioral instability (e.g., impulsivity, poor behavioral controls), and social deviance (e.g., juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility). Several scholars have argued that early childhood maltreatment impacts the development of psychopathy, although views regarding its role in the four facets differ. We conducted a meta-analysis including 47 studies comprising a total of 349 effect sizes and 12,737 participants, to investigate the association between the four psychopathy facets and four types of child maltreatment: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse.We found support for a moderate link between overall psychopathy and childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect, as well as overall childhood maltreatment. The link between psychopathy and childhood sexual abuse was small, but still significant. These associations were stronger for the behavioral and antisocial facets than for the affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy, but nearly all associations were significant. Our findings are consistent with recently developed theories on the role of complex trauma in the development of severe personality disorders. Trauma-focused preventive and therapeutic interventions can provide further tests of the trauma-psychopathy hypothesis.