IS IT POSSIBLE TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF ABUSE ON CHILDREN WITH PERVASIVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS

Although it is now recognized that children may exhibit widespread sym ptoms of stress following exposure to abuse or neglect, the impact of traumatic experiences on children with pervasive developmental disorde rs has received little attention. The present paper describes a strate gy devised to assess the long-term effects of abuse on a group of chil dren who had attended a specialist autistic school where physical and emotional mistreatment of pupils was well documented. Because most of the children had very limited communication skills, the evidence relie d heavily on retrospective parental reports. Despite the problems inhe rent in using such data it was possible to derive reliable measures th at could be used to test hypotheses about predicted patterns of behavi oral change, based on work with other children who have been abused. I n most cases, too, parental reports could be corroborated by informati on from other sources. Consistent patterns in both the nature and timi ng of behavioral disturbances were found, which seemed to relate speci fically to the period of abuse at the school.