Premium Essay

Abusive Head Trauma Research Paper

Submitted By
Words 1349
Pages 6
Abusive head trauma (AHT), also called shaken baby syndrome, is a traumatic brain injury to a child as a result of child abuse. Shaking as well as throwing a baby constitutes AHT. When a caretaker forcefully shakes a baby, his or her head muscles will rotate in a circular motion as their head whips back and forth. Impact is especially damaging because the fast acceleration and deceleration is very dangerous and causes blood vessels to rupture, tearing in the brain, and bleeding of the brain. AHT is the most common cause of traumatic brain injury in infants. Around 25% of victims die from AHT. Infants are at a high risk of AHT due to their large head size relative to the rest of their body and their inability to support their head with their …show more content…
Common triggers of AHT include crying, toilet training issues, interrupting, and feeding issues. Often times, the baby will stop crying after being shaken because his or her brain is not receiving enough oxygen and consequently the baby falls asleep. This is considered a hypoxic-ischemic brain injury when the brain experiences a decrease of oxygen that is dangerous (hypoxia) and a diminished blood supply (ischemia). Long-term effects of AHT include brain damage, learning difficulties, learning behavioral problems, seizures, deafness, cerebral palsy, and permanent vegetative state. Boys are more frequently victims of AHT than girls. Other risk factors are those of a lower socioeconomic class and boyfriends of the mother living in the home. Around 70% of the time the perpetrator is a male. Identifying abusive head trauma is a very meticulous process. Mechanisms behind an injury must be carefully understood in order to screen the differences between accidental trauma and …show more content…
The majority of axonal injuries, brain damage that is brought on by shearing and causes lesions and brain swelling characteristic of AHT, have been determined to be hypoxic-ischemic in nature rather than traumatic. Thus, more attention has been directed on identifying spinal injuries in AHT. Prior to this discovery, spinal injuries were rarely reported in conjunction with AHT cases, mainly because no one ever looked for them. Autopsy protocol prior to 2000 removed the brain and severed the spinal cord. Since then, the protocol was changed and the spinal cord is now removed with the brain. Spinal injuries have now been identified in 70% of abusive head trauma cases that ended in fatality. In this paper, research was conducted to study the spine in AHT victims in order to discover the prevalence of spinal injuries in AHT compared to accidental and nontraumatic groups. The entire study included a total of 183 children under the age of 48 months who had spinal MRIs sometime between 2000 and 2012. Radiographical and clinical findings were collected and analyzed for traumatic spinal injuries. Between the three groups the incidence, distribution, and radiological characteristics of bone, ligamentous injuries, and soft-tissue injuries of the spine

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Journal Article Review

...examine the roles forgiveness therapy has on emotionally abused women in the article The Effects of Forgiveness Therapy on Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress for Women After Spousal Emotional Abuse. According to Reed and Enright (2006), forgiveness therapy is designed to help the client let go of the anger and resentment that stems from a justifiable wrongdoing. The researchers believe that forgiveness therapy will be beneficial to the women who were emotionally abused by their spouse because it targets the resentment the woman has for the abuser. These emotionally abused women often times experience learned helplessness and accusatory suffering. Learned helplessness often occurs when women develop self-blame in response to their abusive spouse’s criticism and ridicule. Whereas accusatory suffering is when the emotional abused spouse continues to feel like the victim and hold onto the resent. Because of the nature of emotional spousal abuse, forgiveness therapy can be very beneficial (Gayle & Enright, 2006). Gayle and Enright (2006) hypothesized that women who participate in forgiveness therapy will have lower levels of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress and higher levels of self-esteem, finding meaning in their suffering, and environmental mastery than those in the alternative...

Words: 1602 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Infant Mental Health Critical Review

...Infant Mental Health Critical Review Abstract In this critical review, the newspaper article being reviewed is Infant mental health: Giving children the best head start, is described and summarized. The topic being discussed is infant mental health and how they should be receiving satisfactory care from their caregivers at an early age. Infant mental health can be defined as a field that studies the parent caregiver relationships and inner lives of infants. In agreement with this article, five scholarly academic sources arguments and findings are observed. This paper shows a critical review of infant mental health; the brain’s plasticity through a critical period and the importance of supportive infant-caregiver relationships that produce positive experiences for infants and further their developmental capabilities ultimately, helping them grow better. It also highlights the reality that the society as a whole is involved in providing better environmental influences for infants in order to supply them with a better future. Recommendations for future research and unanswered questions in infant mental health are made in response to the need of support of caregivers and the society. The news article, Infant mental health: Giving children the best head start, emphasizes the importance of the first 1000 days of an infant’s life (2015). Adulthood is shaped and impacted by our early experiences (D’alton, 2015). Professor Kevin Nugent is an expert of early child development...

Words: 2379 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Child Abuse

...only captures the tragic problem of health related issues of African Americans, it also applies to the social welfare problems of these children and their families. Each year over 2,000 children die at the hands of their parents or caretakers (U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1995). Abuse and neglect in the home are considered one of the leading causes of death for children four years of age and younger and the largest number of child abuse fatalities is due to severe head trauma. Homicide statistics are only part of the grim reality, with near–fatal abuse and neglect accounting for more than 18,000 permanently disabled children, and approximately 142,000 serious injuries (Baladerian, 1991). Findings from the report, A Nation’s Shame: Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States, indicate that African Americans are overrepresented in both fatalities and near–fatal injuries (U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1995). Research shows that child deaths from physical trauma are most frequently caused by angry, out–of–control males. Mothers are more likely to be responsible for deaths caused by severe neglect (U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1995). However, researchers 31 cannot account for the large numbers of cases of homicide against African American children. Data on the types of abuse by ethnic groups are...

Words: 8401 - Pages: 34

Free Essay

“Length of Sentence” Distribution by Gender

...Impact and Relationship of Substance Abuse and Child Maltreatment: Risk and Resiliency Factors What Research Tells Us Martha Morrison Dore, Ph.D. Columbia University School of Social Work 622 West 113th Street New York, New York 10027 212/854-5461 Paper prepared for presentation at the conference entitled “Protecting Children in Substance Abusing Families,” September 28, 1998, sponsored by the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, University of Minnesota School of Social Work, Minneapolis, MN. Researchers are just beginning to demonstrate empirically what child protective services workers have been observing for nearly two decades now: many, if not most, families who come to the attention of the child welfare system are involved with drugs or alcohol or both. Founded cases of child abuse and neglect have risen exponentially since the mid-1980s, when the crack form of cocaine, a cheap, easily used form of the drug, became widely available. Studies conducted since that time have identified substance abuse as a contributing factor in 40% to 80% of substantiated cases of child maltreatment (Curtis & McCullough, 1993; Magura & Laudet, 1996; Murphy, Jellinek, Quinn, Smith, Poitrast, & Goshko, 1991). Further, studies of substance abusing parents have found child-rearing beliefs and attitudes that heighten risk for child abuse (Williams-Peterson et al., 1994), as well as elevated rates of first-time reports to child protective services (Jaudes & Ekwo, 1995), re-reports...

Words: 9354 - Pages: 38

Premium Essay

Bullies in the Workplace

...A White Paper from the Society for Human Resource Management BULLIES IN THE WORKPLACE: A FOCUS ON THE “ABUSIVE DISRESPECT” OF EMPLOYEES By Teresa A. Daniel “Bullying is the sexual harassment of 20 years ago; everybody knows about it, but nobody wants to admit it”. —Lewis Maltby (Russell, 2001) The purpose of this paper is to review the current research and literature about workplace bullying, to provide information about how organizations can learn to more quickly identify bullies and to suggest ways of dealing with these toxic people so that the corporate culture is not negatively impacted by their behavior. Overview To be successful, organizations must create an atmosphere that inspires both innovation and risk-taking. In an increasingly competitive global economy, such innovation is more important than ever before (Hamel, 2000). However, not only does workplace bullying stifle productivity and innovative practices, but bullies often target the organization’s most talented employees—those individuals who are generally the most threatening to bullies (McCord & Richardson, 2001). As a result, the creativity and productivity of the organization’s most talented human capital is often negatively affected by this type of behavior at work or, worse yet, good employees are driven out of the company altogether. Bullies are often hard to identify because they operate “under cover”—that is, on the surface they appear to be civil and cooperative, while they do ...

Words: 4655 - Pages: 19

Premium Essay

David Spiegel's Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

...Nickeas (2006) discuss one individual who suffered recurrent verbal, physical, and sexual abuse from her parents and relatives, throughout childhood, in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing (p.180-187). Rachel would dissociate from the abusive events so that she seemed to be a bystander. She called these “dreams” which eventually allowed her to develop a numbness to physical pain. Once the disorder developed, she frequently return to reality and find herself in a place she could not remember traveling to, or wake up “...to find herself walking across the fields near her house…” (Stickley & Nickeas, 2006). Not only did Rachel experience loss of time, but she also heard voices and saw varied versions of herself in the room. She learned to imitate the behavior of other people to seem normal in social situations. She also paid close attention to the time and would write notes to herself, either on paper or on her hand, and wore an identity bracelet in case she got lost. For a while, these strategies did not hinder Rachel from work, but eventually Rachel began talking to herself more, daydreamed more, heard voices more often, and began to have frequent panic attacks. Rachel found psychological help and learned ways to help to re-associate herself with...

Words: 951 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

Brain Development

...Brain Development • Implications for Practice and Policy • Summary U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families Administration on Children, Youth and Families Children’s Bureau Child Welfare Information Gateway Children’s Bureau/ACYF 1250 Maryland Avenue, SW Eighth Floor Washington, DC 20024 800.394.3366 Email: info@childwelfare.gov www.childwelfare.gov Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development www.childwelfare.gov In recent years, there has been a surge of research into early brain development. New technologies, such as neuroimaging (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging or MRI), provide increased insight into how the brain develops and how early experiences affect that development. One area that has been receiving increasing research attention involves the effects of abuse and neglect on the developing brain, especially during infancy and early childhood. Much of this research is providing biological explanations for what practitioners have long been describing in psychological, emotional, and behavioral terms. There is now scientific evidence of altered brain functioning as a result of early abuse and neglect. This emerging body of knowledge has many implications for the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. The Newborn Brain The raw material of the brain is the nerve cell, called the neuron....

Words: 8037 - Pages: 33

Premium Essay

Essay

...Clin Soc Work J (2014) 42:323–335 DOI 10.1007/s10615-014-0496-z ORIGINAL PAPER Trauma Through the Life Cycle: A Review of Current Literature Shulamith Lala Ashenberg Straussner Alexandrea Josephine Calnan • Highlight every key term that refers to the following key concepts: 1) "trauma" generally a) "large T trauma" b) "micro-trauma" 2) "resilience" Published online: 31 May 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract This paper provides an overview of common traumatic events and responses, with a specific focus on the life cycle. It identifies selected ‘‘large T’’ and ‘‘micro’’ traumas encountered during childhood, adulthood and late life, and the concept of resilience. It also identifies the differences in traumatic events and reactions experienced by men compared to women, those related to the experience of immigration, and cross generational transmission of trauma. Descriptions of empirically-supported treatment approaches of traumatized individuals at the different stages of the life cycle are offered. Keywords PTSD Á Large-T and micro-traumas Á Neurobiology Á Gender differences Á Immigrants Á Treatment approaches The past is never dead. It’s not even past. William Faulkner The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. Judith Lewis Herman S. L. A. Straussner (&) Silver School of Social Work, New York University, 1 Washington...

Words: 10490 - Pages: 42

Free Essay

Sexual Harrassment in the Workplace

...Running head: SEXUAL HARASSMENT Workplace Advances Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Xxxxx xxxxxxxx Indiana University Southeast Abstract This study focuses on sexual harassment in the workplace. Sexual harassment affects people in every position and every field. Sexual harassment is broken into two types and has different levels. Sexual harassment in the workplace is a form of discrimination. Whether the harassers intent is to intimidate the victim into submission to show the harassers power or to persuade the victim to perform sexual favors to protect their job, it is ultimately a power struggle. The victim may experience unwelcomed sexual advances or demeaning abusive behavior producing a hostile work environment. The victim may suffer physical or mental effects of the abuse causing depression or Sexual Harassment Trauma Syndrome. Courts have ruled on both sides of sexual harassment; both in favor of the harasser and the victim. Employers can be found liable if the courts discover there was knowledge of the harassment but the company did nothing to correct the problem. Workplace Advances Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Introduction The subject of this paper is sexual harassment in the workplace. It is focused toward employers and employees to discuss sexual harassment; what sexual harassment is, who does the harassing and how to stop sexual harassment in the workplace. Background A relatively new term but is not a new problem, sexual harassment has...

Words: 2263 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Term Paper

...Introduction Most of the time, physical abuse is not recognize by peoples as a serious problem. Physical abuse occurs when someone physically hurts you, such as by hitting you or throwing something at you. Even if someone only hits you once or doesn't hurt you that badly, it is a big deal. It may be not so serious because it seems they’re not badly hurt, but what the people doesn’t know is they are causing harm, a serious harm to that people they hurt physically.Abuse tends to escalate, putting you at greater risk in the future. Just one incident of being physically hurt by anyone is unacceptable, and you should take steps to stop the abuse. They cause harm in the sense that that even small hurting can cause hidden scars, Hidden scars which are formed by the emotional and psychological wounds. This Hidden scars is manifested by almost all of the people specifically during their teenage years. All parents want a disciplined and well behaved child. However, there are times when a parent loses control or simply has no control over their child. This is when simple parenting crosses the line and becomes emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is elusive. Unlike physical abuse, the people doing it and receiving it may not even know it is happening. It can be more harmful than physical abuse because it can undermine what we think about ourselves. It can cripple all we are meant to be as we allow something untrue to define us. Emotional abuse can happen between parent and child, husband...

Words: 13520 - Pages: 55

Free Essay

Asthma

...Standardized Simulation NR442 Asthma Management/Nabiha Meer Chamberlain College of Nursing: Nursing Students We want to thank you in advance for your active participation in this standardized simulation. Our purpose is to immerse you in a high quality clinical experience that will enhance critical thinking, decision-making, and prepare you as you move forward in the curriculum and transition into practice. The following material can be used in scenario preparation. You will find preparation documentation that includes course and student learning outcomes as well as general scenario information and resources. A brief patient history will be provided in addition to the most recent physician orders. Be prepared to document your assessment findings, administration of medication, and nursing notes. A medication administration record, laboratory results and patient education material will be provided for you during the simulated experience. One of the most important aspects of simulation is the assessment of performance and debriefing. Keep in mind that the purpose of participation is to enhance your learning and allow you to identify areas of needed remediation. There is no high-stakes testing. We are only asking that you engage in the learning experience and begin to use the feedback provided to enhance your practice. We want you to be able to self-reflect on your actions and interventions and remediate areas that you identify. An assessment matrix has been created...

Words: 3842 - Pages: 16

Premium Essay

Childhood Sexual Abuse

...The Crisis of Childhood Sexual Abuse Daniel Green Liberty University August 4, 2012 Abstract Child sexual abuse (CSA) represents a growing crisis that affects children, families, and communities worldwide. Though CSA does not severely damage everyone who has had this experience, a very significant number of individuals experience short and long-term developmental difficulties resulting from the initial abuse. Psychological issues such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other related anxiety issues are common problems associated with CSA. This paper will discus some of the causes, effects, interventions and treatments of CSA, along with a biblical, Christ-centered perspective that may aid in providing hope for those living through the crisis of CSA. The Crisis of Childhood Sexual Abuse Without a doubt, child sexual abuse (CSA) represents a growing crisis that affects children, families, and communities worldwide. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010), as many as one in four children are sexually abused. In the United States alone, 80,000 cases of CSA are reported each year (American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2008). However, despite national efforts, many cases go unreported because prevalence rates are only accurate to the extent that victims of CSA are willing to disclose. Based on retrospective studies of adult survivors of CSA, it has been estimated that only 1 in 20 cases of sexual abuse is...

Words: 4594 - Pages: 19

Free Essay

Strategic Analysis

...720th Special Tactics Strategic Analysis The 720 Special Tactics Group Strategic Analysis Strategic Planning OM 5040 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Background 4 History 7 Organization 11 Mission statement 13 Mission 13 Mission Task 13 Vision statement analysis 15 Strategic management Application 17 Value Chain 18 Primary Activities 18 Support Activities 19 Translating...

Words: 4997 - Pages: 20

Free Essay

Child Abuse

...34 organisations and individuals were met. Six days were spent in each country, except in Afghanistan, where only three days were spent. The six locations were Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi. Organisations met included those working on child sexual exploitation and sexual health, and those working with communities of street children, MSM (men who have sex with men), and trafficked women and girls. Many groups could not be visited due to time limitations. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), university psychology departments, community-based organisations (CBOs), international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and donor agencies, as well as independent research consultants and a theatre animator | | | were amongst the contacts met. Interviews were held | | | with those at management level, heads of organisations, | | | coordinators of child protection units, trainers, | | | programme officers, field workers, therapists and | | | counsellors. Wherever possible, counsellors, therapists | | | and caregivers working directly with children were | | | interviewed. | 1 | | | | | Objectives The objectives were to: * collect and compile information on organisations working on community-based approaches to combat CSA and to assess their level of psychosocial support, including their structures and mechanisms; and * map sexual...

Words: 9700 - Pages: 39

Premium Essay

Resistance to Bulleying in Workplace

...Communication Monographs Vol. 73, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 406 Á433 Take This Job and . . . : Quitting and Other Forms of Resistance to Workplace Bullying Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik Adult bullying at work is an unbelievable and, at times, shattering experience, both for those targeted as well as for witnessing colleagues. This study examines the narratives of 30 workers, some of whom where targeted and all of whom saw others bullied. Their responses paint a complex picture of power in bullying situations that reframe the ‘‘power-deficient target’’ into agents who galvanize a variety of resources on their own or others’ behalf but also place them at considerable risk. In some cases, employees evaluate the abusive situation and quickly resign. Others protest but, if resistance fails to stop abuse, they also leave organizations. The paths of resistance, case outcomes, and dialectic nature of resistance and control are discussed. Keywords: Workplace Bullying; Verbal Aggression; Organizational Communication; Resistance; Power Adult bullying at work is a shocking, frightening, and at times shattering experience, both for those targeted and for onlookers. Workplace bullying, mobbing, and emotional abuse*essentially synonymous phenomena*are persistent, verbal, and nonverbal aggression at work that include personal attacks, social ostracism, and a multitude of other painful messages and hostile interactions. Because this phenomenon is perpetrated by and through communication, and because...

Words: 13535 - Pages: 55