Child Maltreatment: Prevention and Treatment

Catalog description

Advanced examination in approaches for preventing child maltreatment and treating its consequences. HD FS (CMAS) 465 Child Maltreatment: Prevention and Treatment (3) Child maltreatment, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect, is a highly prevalent condition affecting nearly one million children each year in the United States alone. This course will delineate the long-term health consequences affecting those who have experienced child maltreatment with an emphasis on those outcomes exerting the greatest impact on overall public health throughout the lifespan. Importantly, a focus on the etiology of such health consequences in the child maltreatment population will be made in order to understand the causal pathways leading to these health consequences. This focus on etiology will serve as a segue into the remaining sections of this course, specifically the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment and its consequences. Universal and targeted prevention programs, where the focus is to prevent an initial instance of child maltreatment from occurring, will be detailed, as will tertiary prevention programs, where the focus is on preventing a re-occurrence of child maltreatment. Similarly, prevention of adverse health outcomes for those affected by child maltreatment will also be covered. Finally, evidenced-based interventions applied with children who have been maltreated and are currently experiencing clinical levels of impairment (e.g. post-traumatic stress disorder) will be detailed. Identification and rehearsal of treatment components commonly used in prevention and clinical intervention programs will be emphasized. Students successfully completing this course will have direct knowledge of the consequences of child maltreatment and the established methods used in prevention and intervention programs applied with this population.