WE'RE ALL SICKOS NOW – AT 8:35 A.M. ET:  We are formally informed by the Obama administration that we require treatment.  From USA Today:

Almost 60% of American adults say they had difficult childhoods featuring abusive or troubled family members or parents who were absent due to separation or divorce, federal health officials report.

In fact, nearly 9% said that while growing up they underwent five or more "adverse childhood experiences" ranging from verbal, physical or sexual abuse to family dysfunction such as domestic violence, drug or alcohol abuse, or the absence of a parent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"Adverse childhood experiences are common," said study coauthor Valerie J. Edwards, team lead for the Adverse Childhood Experiences Team at CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. "We need to do a lot more to protect children and help families," she said.

About a quarter of the more than 26,000 adults surveyed reported experiencing verbal abuse as children, nearly 15% had been physical abused, and more than 12% — more than one in 10 — had been sexually abused as a child.

Since the data are self-reported, Edwards believes that the real extent of child abuse may be still greater. "There is a tendency to under-report rather than over-report," she said.

COMMENT:  Look, we do not take lightly the subject of child abuse, and clearly some people have had nightmarish childhoods.  But I recall the "child abuse" hysteria of the 1980s, wherein a number of innocent people were sent to jail, their lives destroyed, by false charges of abuse.

Research like this needs to be vetted, and vetted some more.  Consider, for example, this comment:

Almost one in five respondents (19.4 percent) had lived as a child with someone who was depressed, mentally ill or suicidal, the report noted.

Really?  As soon as you put the word "depressed" in there, you're playing on a pretty crowded field.  Even "mentally ill" is suspect.  How would a child know how to assess mental illness?

Or this:

Identifying and treating abuse early can prevent many serious health consequences later in life. Programs that provide quality care for children, as well as home visitation programs in early infancy and parenting programs, are part of the solution to this problem, Sanders said.

True, unless you get govenment departments that go completely crazy, as happened in the 80s, and start going after innocent people. 

This just looks like one of these "reports" that throws out a lot of scare numbers.  I would have loved to have seen a more carefully written story, with a variety opinions on the quality of the research.  I would have also liked to have seen some reporting on the financing of the study, and how that might have influenced the outcome.

No accusations made here, just concern over methods.  We've been burned too many times before.

December 21, 2010