Study shows more child abuse in homes of returning vets

[Judi Lynn]

Source: USA Today

Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker, USA TODAY
5:20 p.m. EST November 12, 2015

WASHINGTON — The babies and toddlers of soldiers returning from deployment face the heightened risk of abuse in the six months following the parent’s return home, a risk that increases among soldiers who deploy more frequently, according to a study scheduled for release Friday.

The study will be published in the American Journal of Public Health. The abuse of soldiers’ children exposes another, hidden cost from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed than 5,300 U.S. troops and wounded more than 50,000 others.

Research by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia looked at families of more than 112,000 soldiers whose children were two years old and younger for the period of 2001 to 2007, the peak of the Iraq war. Researchers examined Pentagon-substantiated instances of abuse by a soldier or another caregiver and from the diagnoses of medical personnel within the military’s health care system.

“This study is the first to reveal an increased risk when soldiers with young children return home from deployment,” David Rubin, co-director of the hospital’s PolicyLab and the report’s senior author, said in a statement. “This really demonstrates that elevated stress when a soldier returns home can have real and potentially devastating consequences for some military families.”


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/12/study-shows-more-child-abuse-homes-returning-vets/75637992/

[valerief]

1. It's not news war fucks with your head. nt

[Stargazer99]

2. How much you want to bet the rich and powerful don't have this problem

They don't fight on the front lines....they let their "inferiors" do the nasty stuff of war ... its the poor and low income that pay the price for the well heeled. And they blame the common man for the country's problems....they need to look at themselves

[proverbialwisdom]

3. WTH?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/12/study-shows-more-child-abuse-homes-returning-vets/75637992/

EXCERPT: "While incidents of child abuse and neglect among military families are well below that of the general population, this study is another indicator of the stress deployments place on soldiers, family members and caregivers," said Karl Schneider, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs. "Since the end of the data collection period in 2007, the Army has enacted myriad programs to meet these kinds of challenges head on, and we will continue working to ensure services and support are available to soldiers, families and their children."

The study focused on the first two years of a child’s life because of the elevated risk for life-threatening child abuse among infants exceeds risk in all other age groups. In all, there were 4,367 victims from the families of 3,635 soldiers.

The rate of substantiated abuse and neglect doubled during the second deployment compared with the first, the study found. For soldiers deployed twice, the highest rate of abuse and neglect occurred during the second deployment and was usually a caregiver other than the soldier.

“The finding that in most cases, the perpetrators were not the soldiers themselves reveals to us that the stress that plays out in military families during or after deployment impacts the entire family and is not simply a consequence of the soldier’s experience and stress following deployment,” said Christine Taylor, the study’s lead author, a project manager the PolicyLab.

[tzar paul]

5. Die Soon, Cheney

And tell the Devil I said hi

[FLPanhandle]

6. My dad came back from Vietnam with PTSD and alcoholism

Great guy beforehand, not a great childhood for us after that his return.

[GGJohn]

8. After I got home from Vietnam,

I made life hell for my wife and kids for about 2 months, when she finally had enough and threatened to take our children and leave, that's when a light bulb went off in my noggin and I sought help via the base chaplin.
War does fuck with one's head in so many different ways.

[wendylaroux]

9. same childhood here,

different war.so bad.
years later, it's just just incredibly sad.
I sometimes feel I caught his ptsd.

[mahina]

11. I know what you mean.

Some of the things he did, like isolating from society, I've adapted, unknowingly. I'll never drink but it busted everybody up. And we were on the other side of the world.

[mahina]

10. Mine too. It broke his huge heart.

Sending love and aloha to him out there in the universe. Aloha no Dad. You did your best.

He went to help. He volunteered. War sucks.

Wishing all hearts healing.

[niyad]

7. NSS

[proverbialwisdom]

12. Study critique here.

http://news.health.com/2015/11/12/military-deployment-tied-to-greater-odds-of-child-abuse-neglect/

[Judi Lynn]

13. Thanks for posting this. What a shame war reaches out and harms family members, as well.

The situations addressed show us ongoing problems which happen while the military person is deployed, as well as when he/she has returned. Had no idea about this aspect.

[proverbialwisdom]

14. That's not my take-away from the link I posted.

My link states that the study, apparently WITHOUT CLEAR DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED, describes a baseline of 3 episodes of abuse per 10,000 children under two years of age per month up to nearly 5 (lower than the civilian population) and proceeds from there.

http://news.health.com/2015/11/12/military-deployment-tied-to-greater-odds-of-child-abuse-neglect/

Yet the study may not offer enough information for the Army to determine specifically what more to do, suggested Dr. Christopher Greeley, chief of the section of public health pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

The study doesn’t separate the specific kinds of maltreatment, and 80 percent of maltreatment is neglect, Greeley said. For example, a previous study looked at the rates of abusive head trauma in more than a half-million children of service members from all military branches and didn’t find a higher rate in military families, whether a parent had been deployed or not, he said.

“This [neglect] could potentially be a very different mechanism than physical abuse,” Greeley said.

“Thus, the strategies for intervention or prevention would also be very different,” he added.

Presumably cases of sudden unexplained infant death are diagnosed accurately and excluded, but that's unclear. Sometimes caregivers are accused of abuse in those cases. How twisted it would be if efforts to investigate specifically that topic using military database were stymied by reframing. Again, the topic of infant death is mentioned in passing in your link, but not mine:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/12/study-shows-more-child-abuse-homes-returning-vets/75637992/

The study focused on the first two years of a child’s life because of the elevated risk for life-threatening child abuse among infants exceeds risk in all other age groups. In all, there were 4,367 victims from the families of 3,635 soldiers.

<>

A key finding was that mandatory reporting of child abuse by the Army to the Pentagon’s Family Advocacy Program appears to have been largely ignored; 80% of the instances were not reported to the program. The program offers parenting instruction, child care and classes to ease a soldier’s transition home. Those services may not be offered widely enough to meet the need, the study found.

Related (President Signs Sudden Unexpected Death Data Enhancement and Awareness Act): http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026275897#post61

[NuclearDem]

15. Repeat deployments, non-existent post-deployment decompression

and insufficient screening for PTSD, TBIs, and other deployment-related conditions all lead to this.

Fix this shit, DOD.