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A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect

BACKGROUND: Traumatization in childhood can result in lifelong health impairment and may have a negative impact on other areas of life such as education, social contacts and employment as well. Despite the frequent occurrence of traumatization, which is reflected in a 14.5 percent prevalence rate of...

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Autores principales: Habetha, Susanne, Bleich, Sabrina, Weidenhammer, Jörg, Fegert, Jörg M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540003/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23158382
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-6-35
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author Habetha, Susanne
Bleich, Sabrina
Weidenhammer, Jörg
Fegert, Jörg M
author_facet Habetha, Susanne
Bleich, Sabrina
Weidenhammer, Jörg
Fegert, Jörg M
author_sort Habetha, Susanne
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Traumatization in childhood can result in lifelong health impairment and may have a negative impact on other areas of life such as education, social contacts and employment as well. Despite the frequent occurrence of traumatization, which is reflected in a 14.5 percent prevalence rate of severe child abuse and neglect, the economic burden of the consequences is hardly known. The objective of this prevalence-based cost-of-illness study is to show how impairment of the individual is reflected in economic trauma follow-up costs borne by society as a whole in Germany and to compare the results with other countries’ costs. METHODS: From a societal perspective trauma follow-up costs were estimated using a bottom-up approach. The literature-based prevalence rate includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as physical and emotional neglect in Germany. Costs are derived from individual case scenarios of child endangerment presented in a German cost-benefit-analysis. A comparison with trauma follow-up costs in Australia, Canada and the USA is based on purchasing power parity. RESULTS: The annual trauma follow-up costs total to a margin of EUR 11.1 billion for the lower bound and to EUR 29.8 billion for the upper bound. This equals EUR 134.84 and EUR 363.58, respectively, per capita for the German population. These results conform to the ones obtained from cost studies conducted in Australia (lower bound) and Canada (upper bound), whereas the result for the United States is much lower. CONCLUSION: Child abuse and neglect result in trauma follow-up costs of economically relevant magnitude for the German society. Although the result is well in line with other countries’ costs, the general lack of data should be fought in order to enable more detailed future studies. Creating a reliable cost data basis in the first place can pave the way for long-term cost savings.
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spelling pubmed-35400032013-01-10 A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect Habetha, Susanne Bleich, Sabrina Weidenhammer, Jörg Fegert, Jörg M Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health Research BACKGROUND: Traumatization in childhood can result in lifelong health impairment and may have a negative impact on other areas of life such as education, social contacts and employment as well. Despite the frequent occurrence of traumatization, which is reflected in a 14.5 percent prevalence rate of severe child abuse and neglect, the economic burden of the consequences is hardly known. The objective of this prevalence-based cost-of-illness study is to show how impairment of the individual is reflected in economic trauma follow-up costs borne by society as a whole in Germany and to compare the results with other countries’ costs. METHODS: From a societal perspective trauma follow-up costs were estimated using a bottom-up approach. The literature-based prevalence rate includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as physical and emotional neglect in Germany. Costs are derived from individual case scenarios of child endangerment presented in a German cost-benefit-analysis. A comparison with trauma follow-up costs in Australia, Canada and the USA is based on purchasing power parity. RESULTS: The annual trauma follow-up costs total to a margin of EUR 11.1 billion for the lower bound and to EUR 29.8 billion for the upper bound. This equals EUR 134.84 and EUR 363.58, respectively, per capita for the German population. These results conform to the ones obtained from cost studies conducted in Australia (lower bound) and Canada (upper bound), whereas the result for the United States is much lower. CONCLUSION: Child abuse and neglect result in trauma follow-up costs of economically relevant magnitude for the German society. Although the result is well in line with other countries’ costs, the general lack of data should be fought in order to enable more detailed future studies. Creating a reliable cost data basis in the first place can pave the way for long-term cost savings. BioMed Central 2012-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3540003/ /pubmed/23158382 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-6-35 Text en Copyright ©2012 Habetha et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Habetha, Susanne
Bleich, Sabrina
Weidenhammer, Jörg
Fegert, Jörg M
A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
title A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
title_full A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
title_fullStr A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
title_full_unstemmed A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
title_short A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
title_sort prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540003/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23158382
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-6-35
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