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BackgroundChildren’s exposure to violence is a major public health issue. The Balkan epidemiological study on Child Abuse and Neglect project aimed to collect internationally comparable data on violence exposures in childhood.MethodsA three stage stratified random sample of 42,194 school-attending children (response rate: 66.7%) in three grades (aged 11, 13 and 16 years) was drawn from schools in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. Children completed the ICAST-C questionnaire, which measures children’s exposure to violence by any perpetrator.ResultsExposure rates for psychological violence were between 64.6% (FYROM) and 83.2% (Greece) for lifetime and 59.62% (Serbia) and 70.0% (Greece) for past-year prevalence. Physical violence exposure varied between 50.6% (FYROM) and 76.3% (Greece) for lifetime and 42.5% (FYROM) and 51.0% (Bosnia) for past-year prevalence. Sexual violence figures were highest for lifetime prevalence in Bosnia (18.6%) and lowest in FYROM (7.6%). Lifetime contact sexual violence was highest in Bosnia (9.8%) and lowest in Romania (3.6%). Past-year sexual violence and contact sexual violence prevalence was lowest in Romania (5.0 and 2.1%) and highest in Bosnia (13.6 and 7.7% respectively). Self-reported neglect was highest for both past-year and lifetime prevalence in Bosnia (48.0 and 20.3%) and lowest in Romania (22.6 and 16.7%). Experiences of positive parental practices were reported by most participating children in all countries.ConclusionsWhere significant differences in violence exposure by sex were observed, males reported higher exposure to past-year and lifetime sexual violence and females higher exposure to neglect. Children in Balkan countries experience a high burden of violence victimization and national-level programming and child protection policy making is urgently needed to address this.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13034-017-0208-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

BackgroundUnderstanding how parental Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may or may not affect the development and mental health in the offspring is particularly important in conflict regions, where trauma-related illness is endemic. In Rwanda, organised atrocities and the genocide against the Tutsi of 1994 have left a significant fraction of the population with chronic PTSD. The aim of the present investigation was to establish whether PTSD in mothers is associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and aggressive and antisocial behaviour in their children.MethodsA community sample of 125 Rwandan mothers who experienced the genocide of 1994 and their 12-year-old children were interviewed. Using a structured interview, symptoms of maternal PTSD and children’s depression, anxiety, and aggressive and antisocial behaviour were assessed by trained and on-site supervised local B.A. psychologists. The interview also included a detailed checklist of event types related to family violence.ResultsIn showing that a maternal PTSD was not associated with child’s psychopathology, the results contradict the assumption of straight “trans-generational trauma transmission”. Instead, a child’s exposure to maternal family violence posed a significant risk factor for a negative mental health outcome. Furthermore, it was not maternal PTSD-symptoms but mother’s exposure to family violence during her own childhood that was associated with the magnitude of adversities that a child experiences at home.ConclusionsContrary to a simple model of a trans-generational transmission of trauma, neither maternal PTSD nor maternal traumatic experiences were directly associated with symptoms of anxiety, depression, or antisocial and aggressive behaviour in the children. Instead, the present results suggest a relationship between parental child rearing practices and children’s mental health. Furthermore, the study details the “cycle of violence”, showing a significant link between maternal violence against a child and its mother’s experience of childhood maltreatment.

The comparison of the various sources of food contamination with organic chemicals suggests that in the public, but also among experts, the perception of risk is often distorted. Firstly, neither pesticides nor environmental pollutants contribute the most; the amount of material migrating from food packaging into food may well be 100 times higher. Secondly, control of these large migrants is often lagging behind the standards set up for other sources, since many of the components (particularly those not being "starting materials") have not been identified and, thus, not toxicologically evaluated. Finally, attitudes towards different types of food contaminants are divergent, also reflected by the legal measures: for most sources of food contamination there are strict rules calling for minimization, whereas the European packaging industry has even requested a further increase in the tolerance to as close as possible to the limit set by the toxicologists. This paper calls for a more realistic perception and more coherent legal measures-and improvements in the control of migration from packaging material.

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