Child abuse affects all social classes and children of all ages, including babies. Teams from the general pediatrics and infectious diseases department of the Necker-Enfants Malades AP-HP hospital, the Paris Cité University, Inserm, the EPI-PHARE scientific interest group (ANSM/Cnam) and the Nantes university hospital tried to identify Maternal factors before and after birth that are associated with early childhood physical abuse (EPM), that is, the intentional use of physical force towards a child before the child’s first birthday. Analysis carried out on the entire French population for ten years.
The results of the online study, coordinated by midwife Flora Blangis and Professor Martin Chalumeau, were published in Lancet Regional Health-Europe.
“The objective was to study prenatal and postnatal maternal risk factors associated with childhood physical abuse in babies under one year old,” Flora Blangis, a postdoctoral researcher in epidemiology, explains to BFMTV. “It allows us to increase our knowledge about this phenomenon, in order to have a better understanding of abuse and subsequently be able to develop prevention programs (…) The more we increase knowledge about this phenomenon, the more we can have. specific and effective prevention programs,” she assures.
Associated factors
According to the WHO, child abuse can have serious short- and long-term consequences, especially on physical and mental health. According to the study, it exposes victims to “neurodevelopmental disorders, mental disorders and somatic diseases.”
In this research, the hospital diagnosis of abuse was used. The researchers used data from the national maternal and child registry EPI-MERES (built from the National Health Data System) taking into account all children born in France between 2010 and 2019: “Of the 6,897,384 children included, 2,994 They were diagnosed with early PID at an average age of 4 months,” the article states.
“Factors associated with childhood physical abuse include low economic resources, age less than 20 years compared to mothers who are between 35 and 40 years old, an alcohol use disorder, alcohol use disorder, opioids, having been hospitalized due to domestic violence, having a chronic psychiatric pathology or a chronic maternal somatic pathology and also for mothers, who have been hospitalized in psychiatry. We analyze these data one year before pregnancy, during pregnancy and one year after pregnancy “analyzes Flora. Blangis.
In infants, the main independent factors most strongly associated with PID are marked prematurity and the diagnosis of a severe chronic neurological pathology.
The researcher specifies that “the study does not allow us to say that a causal relationship exists”; evokes “a multifactorial environment.” “For example, when we say that young maternal age is a risk factor for abuse, (…) we are talking about an environment where there is more risk. We cannot say who was the perpetrator of the abuse (…) This It is also the interest of our study to show that there are many risk factors and that they must be taken into account globally in order to have effective prevention actions,” concludes the postdoctoral researcher.
Better understand the mechanisms of physical abuse in early childhood
If the maternal factors were studied with data from the national Maternal and Child Registry EPI-MERES, this was not the case with the factors linked to the father, which, therefore, are not analyzed in this research.
The objective of this work, according to the scientists’ conclusions, is to promote “a better understanding of the mechanisms of PID and the development of effective prevention programs” covering all the highlighted risk factors.
“For example, carry out risk stratification in maternity,” suggests Flora Blangis. “That is, the study of these risk factors would allow maternity caregivers to use our results to be able to allocate the preventive actions that already exist to the people who need them most (…) People for whom the environment is most harmful.
For several years now, Flora Blangis, who received the L’Oréal-UNESCO Young Talents Women and Science Award in 2023 awarded to 35 young researchers, has been working with other teams on issues of child abuse: “In France and in the world as a whole , there is little research on this topic so it is an important topic to address (…) Any type of abuse, physical, sexual, psychological or even neglect deserves to be studied. There is a lot of work to do in all of these subjects.”
According to previous work cited by INSERM, physical abuse affects between 4% and 16% of children under 18 years of age in high-income countries and around a third of physical abuse diagnoses are made late.
Source: BFM TV
