Child Maltreatment | Penn State College of Health and Human Development

The work of several HDFS faculty is explicitly focused on the prevention, treatment, and long-term consequences of child maltreatment, primarily sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Faculty are actively working on universal prevention efforts, optimizing evidence-based trauma treatments, and novel treatment strategies. Large cohort studies utilize state-of-the-art methods for investigating the risk-factors for common maltreatment sequelae including mental and physical health disparities, psychosexual development, healthy relationships, regulatory capacities for managing daily stress, neurocognitive and neurophysiological functioning, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, and intergenerational transmission. Avenues for resilience and reversibility, with particular focus on the interplay between biology and behavior, are thematic of this research. Faculty also work to demonstrate the economic burden of maltreatment to impact policy and implore large public investment in education, protection, prevention, and treatment.

HDFS faculty who study Child Maltreatment include:

David M. Almeida