Science shows that children who are exposed to violence at an early age

In 2023, the expensive project of the pharmaceutical company Menarini and sponsored by the Italian Pediatric Society and the Italian Federation of Pediatricians will start from Milan for the eighth year. Confronting Abuse 2.0 Visibility and Communication in Child and Adolescent Abuse. The aim is, thanks to training courses aimed at pediatricians, to promote the widespread dissemination of knowledge on maltreatment and maltreatment, throughout the country and in hospitals.

The activities aim, by making doctors aware of the characteristics of abuse, to prepare them, so that they can recognize violence by recognizing its signs early, so that they can prevent consequences in adulthood and know how to do so. manage it. The initiative, which began in the Lombard capital, would continue until end of 2023 (mid-December) also in 8 other cities: Rome, Ascoli, Foggia, Naples, Palermo, Pisa, Turin, Trieste.

This systematic interest in violence against minors has been increasingly strengthened over the years, as important studies reveal that the phenomenon is not only increasingly rampant, but also that young victims of abuse, in adulthood, face a series of well-founded problems.

I mentioned the data before Central Directorate of the Italian Criminal Police That compares 2020 numbers with those for 2021 and the first half of 2022 shows that cases of violence against minors in schools increased by 54% and sexual violence by 19%.

The abuse suffered in childhood or during adolescence affects life in adulthood physical and mental harm permanent: This is indicated by an important British study conducted by the University of Glasgow jointly with the University of Hong Kong on a sample of 141,748 individuals between the ages of 37 and 73 years and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. The study proved that the violence experienced by children and adolescents shortens telomeres, the component of DNA that determines the health conditions of adults.

Adults who were repeatedly exposed as children to three types of abuse, physical, sexual and emotional, had shorter telomeres than adults who were not or were not abused. Pietro Ferrara, National Representative for the Area of ​​Abuse and Abuse of the Italian Pediatric Society, explains how adults who were abused as children live poorly and age prematurely. This is because stress and the biochemical alterations caused by violence cause the erosion of telomeres, which predisposes length and quality of lifeAnd even in girls who have been abused, there is, in adulthood, a higher incidence of tumors, as evidenced by the Public Health Agency of Canada study of 21,915 subjects and published in BioMed Central Cancer.