Child Abuse

Summary-Response Paper

Child Abuse, Perceived Social Support, and Posttraumatic

Stress Symptoms

In their article “Child Abuse, Perceived Social Support, and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms: A Moderation Model,” Laura C. Wilson and Angela Scarpa give details about the traumatic stress that comes from child abuse. The article begins by a recent research study that shows high rates of child abuse. In the United States in 2006, it was estimated that 16% of children were targets to physical abuse (512). Keeping the study in mind, the child abuse survivors show that they struggle with adjustment issues, such as physical, psychological, interpersonal, and behavioral difficulties (512). Seeing difficulties in the survivors, it is the women who are frequently the targets to child abuse. The reason why is because when a male gets abused, it is unlikely they will come forward, and say they were abused.

Wilson and Scarpa describe social support as being loved by, cared for, or valued by another individual, and functioning as part of an interpersonal network (512). They explain that they believe that children who experienced sexual abuse will more likely have more posttraumatic stress symptoms then the children who experienced just physical abuse (513). In the end, they perform a study by taking people and categorized them into two groups. One group as the ones who received sexual abuse, and the other group for the ones who just experienced just abuse. In the end of the article, it is described that ones who did received sexual abuse will have more traumas to them then the ones who just experienced abuse. As a result, each person is different in when finding out what type of social support he or she needs help with, and what type of abuse the child received.

I have never experienced sexual abuse or just abuse from anyone, so I wouldn’t know how someone who received abuse would suffer from this in the future. As how the article went, I could really understand see...