Children of U.S. Army soldiers may be at greater risk for abuse during the six months after a parent returns from deployment, and the risk increases for the children of soldiers deployed more than once, according to a new study.
The study was funded by the Defense Health Program to assess the abuse risk in Army families in order to develop support programs to prevent or deal with child maltreatment issues.
While incidents of child abuse and neglect among military families are well below that of the general population, this study is another indicator of the stress deployments place on soldiers, family members and caregivers," said Karl F. Schneider, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, in a press release.
Researchers at PolicyLab, a research unit at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, reviewed substantiated reports of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and neglect, collected by the Department of Defense's Family Advocacy Program, as well as medical diagnoses of the maltreatment of children from TRICARE. The records were collected between 2001 and 2007 for the children of 112,325 deployed U.S. Army soldiers.
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