Journal Entry 4 (Psychological Maltreatment)

     Going into reading my fourth article, I needed to find an article that could establish a new viewpoint on psychological maltreatment. Every article I have read thus far had only talked about the negative aspect of psychological maltreatment, and how it must be recognized and taken care of promptly. I took the time to research something that at least argues the fact that psychological maltreatment is a very dangerous issue. While that is a very hard issue for someone to argue, the next article I read brought up some interesting points that I believe counter my original belief that psychological maltreatment is the most dangerous form of child abuse.

     "A Psychologists and Child Psychological Severity Assessment" is an article that discusses the severity of child psychological maltreatment, and how psychologists should respond and research the topic to gain more insight. While at first I wasn't convinced of the article being able to argue any counterpoints to my topic question, I soon came across a few paragraphs that talked about how psychological maltreatment is a new, and very under-researched field of psychology and child abuse. "Despite evidence suggesting that psychological maltreatment in the family may be the prevalent and damaging form of child maltreatment, and the mosr=t challenging to detect and address, it has received relatively little attention from researchers, policy makers and professionals working in the child protection field."  (Arruabarrena) This quote raises a serious question in my mind. Why would this area of child abuse receive so little attention from professionals and intellectuals, if it is one of the most common and damaging? Reading on, I found another quote that gave me a theory about why this is. "Despite the impossibility of establishing direct, unavoidable, and one-directional causes between a single experience and child development, it can be stated that psychological maltreatment in childhood constitutes a significant risk factoe for the onset of serious and long-lasting emotional, social and cognitive problems." (Gabarino, 2011) This quote brings up the interesting point that correlation does not equal causation. Is it possible that professionals in this field are not putting as much time into researching child psychological maltreatment because they cannot prove that it is the experience of psychological maltreatment that disturbs childhood development. I believe that it is certainly possible. This changes my ideology a bit, however. How can an issue that seems so dangerous to all of mankind be so unattended? While this article contains much more information, it doesn't seem to answer that question. So as I continue my research, that is another big question that weighs on my mind, but it balances out my thoughts, as the other articles made me believe that child psychological maltreatment was second only to murder, seeing in this article that is not well researched makes me wonder if psychological maltreatment is so important to childhood development.