Child Abuse Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Child Abuse, including details on family violence, examinations, long-term effects, psychiatrics disorders.

Risk of death among children reported for nonfatal maltreatment.

Jonson-Reid M, Chance T, Drake B

Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA.

This article presents analyses of longitudinal data to explore whether low-income children who survived a first incident of reported maltreatment were at higher risk of later childhood death compared to a matched comparison group of low-income children without reports of maltreatment (n = 7,433). Compared to the comparison group, children in the maltreatment group had about twice the risk of death before age 18 (0.51% vs. 0.27%). Among children with mal-treatment reports, median time from the first report to subsequent death was 9 months. The majority of deaths among children who were reported for maltreatment could be categorized as preventable (accidents or recurrent maltreatment) as compared to resulting from severe health conditions.

Published 12 January 2007 in Child Maltreat, 12(1): 86-95.
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