Background

Child maltreatment-related fatalities occur among children of all ages. However, few published studies have examined child abuse and neglect deaths among older children and adolescents.

Objective

To epidemiologically describe child maltreatment-related fatalities among children in the United States 5−17 years old.

Participants and setting

Ten years of data from the United States National Violent Death Reporting System (2006-2015) were analyzed to examine child maltreatment deaths among children 5−17 years of age.

Methods

Child fatalities attributed to homicide or undetermined causes were reviewed by the study team to identify deaths related to child abuse and/or neglect, injury mechanisms, relationships between perpetrators and victims, victim and perpetrator characteristics, and circumstances surrounding the deaths.

Results

The study team identified 285 abuse- and/or neglect-related fatalities during the study period. The mean age of the victims was 9.2 years and 54.4 % of victims were male. Suspected perpetrators were most frequently mothers (28.1 %) and fathers (26.3 %). The most common injury mechanism was firearms (20.7 %). A significantly greater percentage of deaths among children 11−17 years were attributable to firearms (31.6 %), compared to deaths among children 5−10 years. Among younger children 5−10 years, blunt force trauma was the most frequent injury mechanism (22.6 %).

Conclusions

Older children and adolescents are frequently excluded from child maltreatment research. Although child maltreatment deaths are less common among older children compared to younger children, these fatalities have unique characteristics that should be considered when developing prevention strategies.

中文翻译：

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5-17 岁儿童和青少年中的儿童虐待致死率

背景

与虐待儿童相关的死亡发生在所有年龄段的儿童中。然而，很少有已发表的研究对年龄较大的儿童和青少年中的儿童虐待和忽视死亡进行了调查。

客观的

从流行病学角度描述美国 5-17 岁儿童中与虐待儿童相关的死亡人数。

参与者和设置

分析了美国国家暴力死亡报告系统 (2006-2015) 的十年数据，以检查 5-17 岁儿童中的儿童虐待死亡情况。

方法

研究小组审查了归因于凶杀或不明原因的儿童死亡人数，以确定与虐待和/或忽视儿童相关的死亡、伤害机制、肇事者与受害者之间的关系、受害者和肇事者的特征以及围绕死亡的情况。

结果

研究小组在研究期间确定了 285 起与虐待和/或忽视相关的死亡事件。受害者的平均年龄为 9.2 岁，54.4% 的受害者是男性。被怀疑的肇事者最常见的是母亲 (28.1%) 和父亲 (26.3%)。最常见的伤害机制是枪支（20.7%）。与 5-10 岁儿童的死亡相比，11-17 岁儿童死于枪支的比例明显更高 (31.6%)。在 5-10 岁的幼儿中，钝器外伤是最常见的损伤机制 (22.6%)。

结论

年龄较大的儿童和青少年经常被排除在虐待儿童的研究之外。尽管与年龄较小的儿童相比，年龄较大的儿童遭受虐待致死的情况较少，但在制定预防策略时应考虑到这些死亡人数的独特特征。