When mental health professional meet with violence - recognizing and reporting child abuse

Professionals working with children and families generally have no doubt that the abused children in the family should be helped. However, between declarations of help and practice there is abyss. Abuse of the family is recognized and reported (systems of child protection, family courts and enforcement) relatively rare. In Poland - extremely rare. Indicators of officially recorded violence against children for years remained at a very low level. Meanwhile the diagnosis of abuse, which does not start the system, coordinated action and is limited to psychological support provided to the abused child, do not interrupt abuse and cannot be effective. Child (regardless of age) cannot oppose violence effectively. Mental health professionals take into account the perspective of abuse within the family in their clinical work too rarely. The diagnosis of abuse is not easy. It requires specialized knowledge. It requires interpretation of the facts, often from different areas - the child's behaviour, somatic complaints, emotional problems, behaviour and explanations of career. Standard psychiatric history is not sufficiently sensitive tool for identifying abuse. The article discusses the most serious diagnostic difficulties. Also it is compared the system of child protection that it is forming in Poland to the American model based on the child protection services. In Poland, it did not even complete the process that in Western countries took place in the eighties of the twentieth century - an increase in social sensitivity, changes of looking at the phenomenon of violence by professionals and serious increase in identified cases of abuse.