Abandoned child syndrome is a behavioral or psychological condition that results from the loss of one or both parents. Abandonment may be physical (the parent is not present in the child's life) or emotional (the parent withholds affection, nurturing, or stimulation).
Parents who leave their children, whether with or without good reason, can cause psychological damage to the child. This damage is reversible, but only with appropriate assistance. Abandoned children may also often suffer physical damage from neglect, malnutrition, starvation, and abuse.
The abandoned child syndrome is not recognized as a mental disorder in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-IV, neither is it part of the proposed revision of this manual, the DSM-5.
Many countries, including Russia and China, have an extremely high rate of physically abandoned children. A 1998 Human Rights Watch committee report found that more than 100,000 children per year were abandoned in Russia. Parents are separated from their children for many reasons, including trouble with the law, financial insecurity, the child's mental or physical challenges, and sometimes population control policies. Involuntary loss of a parent, such as through divorce or death, can also create abandonment issues.
Read more about Abandoned Child Syndrome: Symptoms
Famous quotes containing the words abandoned, child and/or syndrome:
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nothing fortuitous happens in a child’s world. There are no accidents. Everything is connected with everything else and everything can be explained by everything else.... For a young child everything that happens is a necessity.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)