Health and Medicine

Child abuse is 40 times more likely when single parents find new partners – Eradicating child abuse in America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two‐thirds, and suicide, serious drug abuse, and domestic violence by three quarters.

“children of divorce – and later, remarriage – are twice as likely to academically, behaviorally and socially struggle as children of first-marriage families: About 20 to 25 percent struggle, compared with 10 percent, a range of research finds.”

They are also more likely to be hurt.

In their article “Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with both Parents,” published in Ethology and Sociobiology, Martin Daly and Margo Wilson note: “If their parents find new partners, children are 40 times more likely than those who live with biological parents to be sexually or physically abused.” According to a Missouri-based study of children living in homes with unrelated adults, children are “nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents.” These are worrying statistics, both disturbing and scary.

Eradicating child abuse in America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two‐thirds, and suicide, serious drug abuse, and domestic violence by three quarters. It would also have a significantly positive effect on workplace performance, and vastly decrease the need for incarceration.

Teenage transgender row splits Sweden as dysphoria diagnoses soar by 1,500%

In the autumn of 2018, the Social Democrat-led government, under pressure from the gay, lesbian and transgender group RFSL, proposed a new law which would reduce the minimum age for sex reassignment medical care from 18 to 15, remove all need for parental consent, and allow children as young as 12 to change their legal gender.

Then in March last year, the backlash started. Christopher Gillberg, a psychiatrist at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy, wrote an article in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper warning that hormone treatment and surgery on children was “a big experiment” which risked becoming one of the country’s worst medical scandals.

In April, Uppdrag Granskning, an investigative TV programme, followed up with a documentary profiling a former trans man, Sametti, who regretted her irreversible treatment.

From Colin Wright

Confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people Up to 2020-04-14

Eradicating child abuse in America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two‐thirds, and suicide, serious drug abuse, and domestic violence by three quarters. It would also have a significantly positive effect on workplace performance, and vastly decrease the need for incarceration.

Research of people with histories of caregiver abuse and neglect consistently demonstrates problems with concentration, anger, panic, depression, food intake, drugs, and sleep, as well as decreased Heart RateVariability, higher levels of stress hormones, and reduced or impaired immune response.

Traumatic life experiences during childhood and adolescence are far more common than expected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that child maltreatment may be the most costly public health issue in the United States, Eradicating child abuse in America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two‐thirds, and suicide, serious drug abuse, and domestic violence by three quarters. It would also have a significantly positive effect on workplace performance, and vastly decrease the need for incarceration. The current practice of applying multiple distinct comorbid diagnoses to traumatized children prevents a comprehensive treatment approach. Approaching their problems from a framework of memories of discreet traumatic ignores the fact that the damage affects the brain’s neural circuitry and goes well beyond dealing with discrete painful events. Our great challenge is to learn to utilize the brain’s neuroplasticity to reorganize defective brain circuits.