Great post and thank you for your good work. Yes, the denial is deep and widespread. I think the Penn State scandal speaks to that.
The numbers and percentages are telling, and anyone living with or working with children and teens should be looking carefully at signals like weight and self mutilation and substance abuse.
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Originally Posted by AtLast
These results certainly go along with my prior work with teen child sexual abuse- every single patient I worked with developed some type of body weight problem from obesity to severe eating disorders such as bulmia and anorexia. Stats that reflect that nearly 80% of women are either sexually abused or harrassed in the US is startling. Look at this and the rate of obesity among our young people along with the increases of heart problems, diabetes and even stroke in our young people related to obesity. And these rates have risen for boys- and so has our awareness of just how often they are victims of sexual abuse (finally, we are getting this!).
Frankly, US society has been more than a little bit in denail about sex abuse of children (and sexual harrassment in the work place). When are we going to deal with why the hell so many people sexually abuse children? Come on, this indicates some things we need to be dealing with for both girls/women and boys/men. Lets get our heads out of the sand!
A really good area for involvement is Michelle Obama's work and support about childhood obesity in the US. There are recent programs and educational pursuits about this cropping up that might help us combat this problem- and the relationship to it and sexual abuse.
A link for "Let's Move"-
http://www.letsmove.gov/ |