Developing Effective Treatments for Child Physical Abuse

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Child physical abuse (CPA) has been associated with a wide range of debilitating psychosocial sequelae, such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, aggressive behavior, poor social problem-solving skills and communication skills, as well as lower levels of empathy and sensitivity towards others. Without treatment, these behaviors may also escalate into violent, criminal behavior in adolescence and adulthood, as well as abusive or coercive behaviors in dating relationships. The behavior may persist throughout CPA victims' lives in adult relationships and parent-child interactions. Although it is critical to include the parent and stop the ongoing abuse, it is necessary to help the child heal to prevent long-term emotional difficulties and to break an eventual cycle of violence. The present study is aimed at developing and examining the relative efficacy of a group cognitive-behavioral treatment model that involves the child and parent in families at risk for repeated CPA. It is hypothesized that the Combined Parent-Child Group CBT intervention will be superior to the Parent-Only Group CBT intervention for reducing children's PTSD and depressive symptoms, abuse-specific attributions, and behavioral difficulties, as well as overall parenting skills, parental attributions about children's behavior, and anger arousal. Parental attributions about failure associated with child rearing situations, and children's abuse-related attributions will be examined for their moderating influences on an exploratory basis. Participants will be children (ages 8 to 13) and their offending family members. Standardized evaluations will be conducted to assess parents' anger arousal, beliefs about children's behavior, parenting practices, parent reports of children's behavior patterns and PTSD symptoms, children's self-reports of PTSD, depression, anger, and perception of parenting style, as well as the use of violent disciplining strategies. After the initial assessment, children and/or their parents will receive a randomly determined group treatment type (Combined Parent-Child Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) vs. Parent-Only CBT). Assessments will be conducted at pre- and post-treatment, and 3-month follow-up.