This volume provides guidelines for those who are investigating, identifying, preventing, and treating the psychological maltreatment of children and adolescents. It also offers a comprehensive explanation of psychological child abuse and clearly defines different types of psychological maltreatment.

The book series, “Child Maltreatment: Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy.” will consist of a state of the art handbook (to be revised every five years) and two to three volumes per year. The first volume in this series is a legacy to C. Henry Kempe. This is a timely publication because 2012 marks 50 years after the appearance of the foundational article by C. Henry Kempe and his colleagues, “The Battered-Child Syndrome.” This volume capitalizes on this 50 year anniversary to stand back and assess the field from the perspective that Dr. Kempe’s early contributions and ideas are still being played out in practice and policy today. The volume will be released at the next ISPCAN meeting, also in 2012.

Since the publication of the first edition in 1991, there has been substantial progress in our understanding of the etiology and associated features of domestic violence. As in the first edition, this book elucidates and highlights the complex multidisciplinary issues facing clinicians who work with family violence cases. Each chapter combines two illustrative cases with a broader discussion of the issues that are encountered by clinicians working with families that engage in abuse or neglect.

The devastating impact of family violence on children, the links between violence and spouse abuse on child development and clinical dysfunction, children's views of violence, and strategies for intervention and prevention are considered in this volume. The authors discuss cases, conceptual models of abuse and dysfunction, and empirical research to portray the scope of the problem and explore promising avenues of resolution.

The maltreatment of children is an issue that has always been with us and civilized societies provide a range of services both social and medical to care for the children and families afflicted. In recent years, greater attention has been drawn to the medical aspects by competent authorities in the fields of forensic medicine, forensic psychiatry, epidemiological psychiatry, child psychiatry and family psychiatry; as well as the social aspects by those child welfare and child care agencies who have the difficult and distasteful task of removing children, with the help of the courts, from parents who can abuse them and are not able to care for them adequately. A multitude of social agencies, whose range of ac tivities involve both the care and, where possible, the social betterment of afflicted families are now involved. Not least in importance is an increase in our global knowledge to help in the prevention or better treatment of these problems. This means more informa tion on familial and genetic factors in human central nervous system develop ment in its broadest sense. This would include how the central nervous system originates, mediates and controls the build up, speed of development and im pulsive release, mastery and direction of aggressive drives and impulses. Very little is so far known about these factors.

Research in child abuse has expanded dramatically since the first controlled studies were started in the mid-1970s. The fields of developmental psychology and clinical child psychology have progressed in tandem, resulting in theoretical richness and increased methodological sophistication. With these advances, it is now commonly recognized that child abuse and neglect can be fully understood only through the use of longitudinal research methods --difficult, expensive, and time-consuming though their application may be. THE EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT reviews the findings from current longitudinal research and also serves as an authoritative guide to the complex methodologic issues involved in conducting such studies. The book's introductory chapter examines the intergenerational transmission of abusive behavior and its adult sequelae. In-depth analyses of three innovative longitudinal investigations follow: the first focuses on the value of an at-risk approach to research in this area; the second evaluates structural equations modeling, a relatively new statistical method; and the third demonstrates the usefulness of a transactional approach to the longitudinal study of different forms of maltreatment. Other contributions focus specifically on the interpretation of existing research and on conducting future studies. Provocative discussions on crucial definitional issues are complemented by equally trenchant analyses of as-yet unresolved design considerations. The remaining chapters deal with basic measurement issues, especially the assessment of parental personality and psychopathology, psychological abuse, parental childrearing belief systems, parent-child attachment and other domains of parent-child interaction, and the impact of maltreatment on physical and emotional development. An effective synthesis of practical and research issues, THE EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT is essential reading for all child development, psychiatry, child psychiatry, family sociology, social work, pediatric, nursing, and other human services professionals responsible for recognizing, treating, and preventing child abuse as well as for ameliorating its long-term consequences.

Previous editions of this book have been greeted with great acclaim. This edition reflects the past decade's advances in research and techniques, and includes contributions from experts on every aspect of child abuse.

Each year, child protective services receive reports of child abuse and neglect involving six million children, and many more go unreported. The long-term human and fiscal consequences of child abuse and neglect are not relegated to the victims themselves-they also impact their families, future relationships, and society. In 1993, the National Research Council (NRC) issued the report, Under-standing Child Abuse and Neglect, which provided an overview of the research on child abuse and neglect. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research updates the 1993 report and provides new recommendations to respond to this public health challenge. According to this report, while there has been great progress in child abuse and neglect research, a coordinated, national research infrastructure with high-level federal support needs to be established and implemented immediately. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research recommends an actionable framework to guide and support future child abuse and neglect research. This report calls for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to child abuse and neglect research that examines factors related to both children and adults across physical, mental, and behavioral health domains-including those in child welfare, economic support, criminal justice, education, and health care systems-and assesses the needs of a variety of subpopulations. It should also clarify the causal pathways related to child abuse and neglect and, more importantly, assess efforts to interrupt these pathways. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research identifies four areas to look to in developing a coordinated research enterprise: a national strategic plan, a national surveillance system, a new generation of researchers, and changes in the federal and state programmatic and policy response.