Young people who are victims of abuse will then be two or three times more likely than others to use social assistance benefits, found two researchers from the CHU Sainte-Justine.
This finding applies to young people from all socio-economic backgrounds, not just those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
“If there is one event in the lives of children that can make a difference to their very long-term developmental trajectory, in terms of their physical health and their mental health, it is abuse and neglect. ‘they lived during childhood,’ summarized Sylvana Côté, director of the Observatory for the education and health of children.
Ms. Côté and her colleague Pascale Domond, who is completing a post-doctorate at the CHU Sainte-Justine, compared data from some 3,000 participants in the Longitudinal Study of Kindergarten Children in Quebec, born in 1980, to databases from the Government of Quebec.
Participants completed questionnaires at age 22 about abuse they may have experienced before age 18, and violence they may have experienced from a life partner between ages of 18 and 22.
About 22% of the 1690 participants with available data said they had been victims of childhood maltreatment, 14.5% of violence by a partner, and 18.5% of both.
The prevalence of childhood physical, sexual or both abuse was 20.4%, 12.2% and 8.3%, respectively.
The researchers measured that physical abuse in childhood, or a combination of physical and sexual abuse during the same period, was associated with a threefold risk of receiving social assistance, compared to young people who had never been abused. .
Repeated abuse, in childhood and adulthood (18-22 years) by a partner, more than tripled the risk.
“For people who have experienced abuse in childhood and as a young adult, the risk is three and a half times higher to have recourse to social assistance for long periods, that is to say five years and over, added Ms. Côté, who is also a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal. So we are really talking about an addiction to social assistance.
A possible dependence on social assistance, she continues, is the culmination of a cascade of negative events that will be linked, directly or indirectly, to abuse, such as difficulties in interpersonal relationships or even studies. unfinished secondary.
The factors that increase the risk of neglect within a family are well known, pointed out Ms. Côté, hence the importance of acquiring the necessary tools to be able to identify them (and therefore intervene) as quickly as possible, in order to reduce the human and societal costs of the problem.
We offer support to families who need it, she continues, “but we rarely measure whether what we are doing is effective”.
“Are the right people using the resources and services offered to them? Does it have an impact?, she asked. This is where the importance of data comes into its own.”
Ms. Côté recently pleaded that Quebec should imitate the Scandinavian countries and ensure greater compatibility of the data that researchers need to carry out their work, especially since, according to her, Quebec has very favorable conditions for implementing place this kind of tracking system.
“If we spend a lot of energy and human and financial resources to support people, but in the end we don’t know what works and then what doesn’t, even if often it’s not white or black, probably ‘We are not making a financial and human return on our investments,’ she said.
The findings of this study were published by the medical journal Pediatrics.