Child maltreatment and its long-term consequences - Analysis of a representative German sample

Child maltreatment is an important risk factor for development. Different types of child maltreatment often do not occur in isolation, but the co-occurrence of different types of child maltreatment is the rule rather than the exception. In addition to the long-term and diverse individual consequences, child maltreatment leads to a high societal burden every year. The WHO has identified child abuse as a major public health problem and the United Nations has made the fight against child maltreatment an aim of its sustainable development agenda. This paper examines and presents the frequency and co-occurrence of different types of child maltreatment and its association with psychological and somatic consequences on the basis of a representative sample. The results illustrate the association between the accumulation of different types of maltreatment and negative consequences for those affected. For example, the risk of negative consequences is up to 10 times higher when four or more types of child maltreatment are experienced. Far too rarely the cumulative effects of multiple stresses are taken into account. Especially, because the effects of maltreatment on health are increasingly well investigated, this knowledge must be taken more into account in the design of prevention and intervention strategies.