please be proactive if you suspect child abuse.  you are not determining that there is definitive abuse if you report, that determination is made by the respective agencies responsible for child welfare.  ignoring it will not make the problem go away and can have deleterious effects for children.

How Child Abuse Primes the Brain for Future Mental Illness

By: Maia Szalvitz

Child maltreatment has been called the tobacco industry of mental health. Much the way smoking directly causes or triggers predispositions for physical disease, early abuse may contribute to virtually all types of mental illness.

Now, in the largest study yet to use brain scans to show the effects of child abuse, researchers have found specific changes in key regions in and around the hippocampus in the brains of young adults who were maltreated or neglected in childhood. These changes may leave victims more vulnerable to depression, addiction and post-traumatic…