Children’s exposure to violence (CEV) in their home, their community, and our society has finally been recognized as a serious mental health, social, and public health problem. This book highlights a summary of relevant current research, practice, and policy issues. It is the third in a series to help provide current state-of-the-science information to stimulate awareness, research, and best practices in the field.

This book provides chapters concerning the physiological effects of violence on children, its effects on behavioral and emotional functioning, and differences between boys and girls. Current interventions for children and families, such as innovative programs that are both home based as well as community based, are described. Promising and evidence-based practices are presented to provide the most recent approaches to helping children recover from the trauma of the abuse.

The chapters in this book provide greater awareness of the issues involved with CEV, stimulate additional research, improve practice techniques, lead to more evidence-based programs for both intervention as well as prevention, and help initiate a national priority to eliminate violence in the home and community.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Emotional Abuse.