Child Abuse (cont.)

Medical Author:

David Perlstein, MD, MBA, FAAP

David Perlstein, MD, MBA, FAAP

Dr. Perlstein received his Medical Degree from the University of Cincinnati and then completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at The New York Hospital, Cornell medical Center in New York City. After serving an additional year as Chief Pediatric Resident, he worked as a private practitioner and then was appointed Director of Ambulatory Pediatrics at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx.

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Medical Editor:

Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD

Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD

Dr. Roxanne Dryden-Edwards is an adult, child, and adolescent psychiatrist. She is a former Chair of the Committee on Developmental Disabilities for the American Psychiatric Association, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and Medical Director of the National Center for Children and Families in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Child abuse is prevented, first, through awareness, then early detection and intervention. Protecting children from abuse is the first and foremost concern of police and child protection authorities.

• Educating children to recognize inappropriate behaviors (sexual and physical) and to report possible abuse to their parents or family at its earliest stages will help children avoid being abused, save families from dysfunctional interactions, identify real abusers almost immediately to law enforcement, and help in the early identification of family members with abusive tendencies before a criminal act occurs.
• In an ideal world, psychiatric help would be available to treat those who abuse children. That is rarely the case. Most abusers, once they have acted out and committed acts of abuse, are arrested, charged, tried, convicted, sent to prison, and marked for life as sexual offenders.
• To prevent abuse by changing the behavior of the abuser (whether they are a loved one or a friend), tendencies to be abusive must be identified before any actual abuse takes place. Once a tendency is identified, the best hope for treating this serious mental disorder is behavioral counseling.

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