AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
The truth is that the effects of child abuse are long-lasting, not just on its victims but on the health system’s bottom line
October 7, 2013
Rebecca Reeve
Churches have begun to acknowledge how they ”failed” abused children. Scouts NSW recently told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse it, too, had ”failed” young boys. But such admissions are insufficient if society’s largest institution, government, fails to invest fully in child protection.
At a time when governments are increasingly driven by fiscal restraint, it is important that public spending decisions around complex issues such as child protection consider not just the short-term effects but also the longer-term costs and benefits – in the case of child abuse, for both the victims and society as a whole.
Research published in the journal Economic Record and conducted by Dr Kees van Gool and myself at the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation shows that in addition to the human cost of child abuse there are lasting health effects for victims and therefore substantial and very long-term costs for the health system.
We used the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ National Survey of Mental Health and Well-being to measure the effect of childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse and ”combined” physical and sexual abuse on long-term health problems and self-harming behaviour into adulthood.
The results indicate that, after controlling for other factors, Australian adults abused in childhood suffer from more physical and mental health problems and have higher annual healthcare costs than adults who were not abused.
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