The recession may be provoking an increase in the deadliest form of child abuse, according to a study that finds that the rate of shaken baby syndrome has nearly doubled since the economy collapsed.
Abusive head trauma, as shaken baby syndrome is formally known, often leads to permanent brain damage or paralysis, says co-author Rachel Berger, a child abuse specialist at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. She studied 511 cases over five years in four hospitals in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Seattleand Columbus, Ohio. Abuse increased in every city; the most dramatic increases were in Seattle and Pittsburgh, she says.
Berger acknowledges that a study such as hers can't prove that the recession caused more people to shake their babies. But she believes the link is strong. Berger included only hospitals that employed the same child-protection team throughout the five-year study to ensure that abuse cases were classified the same way before and after the recession began.
And doctors also counted only "unequivocal" cases of child abuse, Berger says. Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-03-abuse03_ST_N.htm
