Child Neglect and Impact on Child Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Implications for Child Psychologists

This paper was a systematic review that discussed the impact of child neglect on child mental health and highlighted the implications of these on the practice of child psychology. Theoretical knowledge was drawn from theories of parenting and health models, and a secondary data collection method was done using online access to empirical studies. The major observations from literature showed that the global prevalence of child neglect was relatively high across different cultures. The major causes of child neglect were highlighted to be unplanned pregnancy of child, socio-economic status of caregiver, personality of caregiver, educational qualification of caregiver, style of parenting adopted by the caregiver and strength of parent-child relationship between parent/caregiver and child. The major informants of child neglect were identified to be people close to the victim such as a neighbor or a peer. Lastly, the major impacts of child neglect on the mental health of children were suicidal risks, criminal tendencies/deviance behaviors, depression, anxiety disorders, poor academic grades, lower IQ, difficulty forming and sustaining healthy social relationships with others and feelings of isolation. Consequently, the discussion, implication of findings for child psychologists, limitation of study and recommendations were thus presented in this paper.