How the evidence-based mental healthcare CACs provide improves the lives of children.

Child abuse and other forms of childhood trauma can have lifelong effects on children, families, and communities. Many studies have shown the strong relationship between childhood trauma and serious outcomes such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, substance use, physical health problems, and even poverty and early death.

But we can prevent these outcomes, especially when children receive services and support early on. Evidence-based mental health treatments like those delivered at National Children’s Alliance’s network of Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) to child victims of abuse can significantly reduce trauma symptoms and prevent the long-term effects of exposure to trauma.

Together, we provide mental health services or referrals to qualified professionals who deliver evidence-based treatments (EBTs) to more than 200,000 children each year. Here’s the evidence for the healing CACs provide in a new brief and shareable images about the prevalence of abuse, the cost of failing to address it, and the success of our model at healing its aftermath.

 

The Brief

Shareable Images

Click here to view "Healing the Future"

Our all-new “Healing the Future” brief outlines the evidence and tells the story of child abuse: the prevalence, the cost, and the hope of healing CACs provide.

Click to View or Download

Here’s how you can make the case for CAC services online and in your community. Click on any of the images above to download full-sized mental health data memes to share on social media, to print out, or to use in your own materials.

Thanks to our Partners at the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)

Our partners at NCTSN provided mental health outcome data from their Core Data Set and help developing these resources. We appreciate their help and their support of children. Learn more about their work at http://www.nctsn.org.

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