Parental Addiction, Unemployment , Divorce Lead to Childhood Abuse

Children whose parents are divorced, suffer from addictions or unemployed are at higher risk of abuse, a new study says.

For the study, a team of researchers from the University of Toronto, Canada, looked at two previous studies conducted in 1995 and 2005. Each study involved nearly 13,000 Canadians, aged 18 or above.

They analyzed the link between childhood abuse and some risk factors like parental addiction, unemployment and divorce. At the end of the study, they found participants who grew up in an environment with all three risk factors present, were 10 times more likely to experience physical abuse from someone close to them.

However, a minority (3.4 percent) of the participants without having any of these risk factors present, reported physical abuse in childhood.

"We were so astonished by the magnitude of the association between the combination of these three risk factors and child abuse in the 1995 survey that we replicated the analysis with a different sample from a 2005 survey," co-author Jami-Leigh Sawyer, a University of Toronto doctoral student and a social worker at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, said in a news release.  "The findings in both data sets were remarkably consistent and very worrisome."

Previous studies have shown adverse childhood experiences leading to severe health outcomes later in life.  Anxiety disorders, drug abuse, suicidal behavior, risky sexual behavior, smoking, cancer and metabolic disorders are some of them.

Results of the study have been published in the journal Child: Care, Health & Development.

Nearly 6 million children are abused and five children die per day across the U.S., according to National Child Abuse Statistics. A CDC report found state and local agencies receiving more than 3 million reports of child maltreatment each year, which means nearly 6 cases every minute.

Even though child protective agencies claimed a remarkable decrease in physical abuse cases across US, a study published in Pediatrics in October found physical, sexual or emotional mistreatment and neglect of children going up in the recent past.

Another study published in the journal Pediatrics, July, found a large number of children being hospitalized due to serious physical abuse in the past ten years, an impact of the economic recession and housing crisis in the U.S.