Parents with histories of psychopathology, trauma, and systemic stressors are at elevated risk for emotion dysregulation, a modifiable driver of child maltreatment. Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) offers transdiagnostic skills that may reduce this risk; however, the evidence for DBT-informed parenting interventions has not been synthesized. This Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses-guided systematic review examined how such interventions are designed, implemented, and evaluated. PubMed, PsycINFO, and MEDLINE were searched from inception to February 2026. Eligible studies were empirical evaluations of DBT-informed parenting programmes for caregivers of children, reporting parent, parenting, or child outcomes; case studies and non-empirical reports were excluded. Of 109 full texts screened, 14 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were coded for intervention characteristics, DBT module coverage (including the use of behaviour chain analysis [BCA], risk of bias (ROBINS-I), and parent and parenting outcomes. Interventions were typically brief (6-14 weeks), group-based, and clinician-delivered; all included mindfulness, and most included emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. Notably, only one study explicitly reported utilizing BCA. Caregivers showed reductions in emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, and parenting stress, alongside decreases in coercive or harsh parenting and gains in validation, effective discipline, and parent-child communication. Evidence was derived primarily from small, uncontrolled pilots; risk of bias was commonly rated as serious, and the overall certainty of evidence was low. Rigorous controlled trials with diverse caregivers are needed. DBT-informed parenting programmes show promise for reducing risk factors associated with maltreatment.

Violence against children is a pervasive global public health, human rights, and development challenge. Over the past 50 years, the field has transformed violence against children from a largely hidden issue into a measurable and preventable problem. This discussion article examines two major drivers of global progress: population-based data systems and evidence-based prevention and response frameworks. First, violence-specific surveys, including the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS), have generated nationally representative data on the prevalence, timing, perpetrators, consequences, disclosure, and service-seeking patterns of violence across diverse settings. Using publicly available VACS findings as a descriptive example, we show how these data have made violence visible, supported global estimates and burden analyses, and created a foundation for policy action and accountability. Second, evidence synthesis efforts, particularly through INSPIRE: Seven Strategies for Ending Violence Against Children, have identified interventions with evidence of effectiveness, including parenting programs, school-based approaches, economic strengthening combined with life skills, healthy relationship education, and therapeutic services for children exposed to violence. Despite this progress, translation into sustained population-level impact remains incomplete. Key threats include the fragility of global data infrastructure, limited evidence on scale and durability, inadequate financing, and emerging risks such as technology-facilitated violence, conflict, displacement, epidemics, and climate instability. The next phase of the field must protect and modernize data systems, scale evidence-informed interventions while generating new learning, integrate violence prevention across sectors, and sustain political commitment to achieve measurable, equitable reductions in violence against children over the next 50 years and beyond.

Childhood emotional abuse from authority figures encompasses verbal abuse, emotional rejection, and overexpectations. Although global emotional abuse is an established correlate of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating, the unique roles of these specific subtypes remain underexamined. Across two studies of adult women recruited from CloudResearch (Ns = 2566; 824), we evaluated associations between authority figure abuse subtypes, body image, and dietary restraint. Bivariate correlations revealed that all subtypes related to poorer body image and higher restraint. Hierarchical regressions demonstrated that emotional abuse subtypes explained incremental variance across outcomes beyond demographic factors. When modeled simultaneously, overexpectations emerged as the sole subtype independently associated with overweight preoccupation, cognitive restraint, and dietary restraint, whereas verbal abuse and emotional rejection were not. However, high shared variance among subtypes attenuated the unique statistical association of overexpectations. These findings highlight authority overexpectations as a potential developmental correlate of weight-related distress. Future prospective research should examine whether experiencing overexpectations relates to internalized perfectionism or rejection sensitivity, and expand traditional appearance-focused models to encompass broader relational stressors.

We report a rare case of a 5-week-old male who presented with isolated acromion fractures occurring bilaterally 10 days apart. As scapular fractures are a high-specificity fracture for abusive injury, these findings were concerning for child abuse. The patient was later diagnosed with congenital glenoid dysplasia. Given this diagnosis with an otherwise normal medical evaluation for physical abuse, this case was deemed indeterminate for abusive injury. The multidisciplinary team consensus was that the injuries were likely fractures resulting from restriction of normal range of glenohumeral motion caused by his glenoid deformity. Literature on congenital glenoid dysplasia is limited in the pediatric population. This case highlights the need for further investigation into early presentations of congenital glenoid dysplasia and its association with acromion fractures.

Sexual victimization is a pervasive public health concern with profound and enduring consequences across the lifespan. Although research has substantially advanced scientific understanding of childhood sexual abuse, scholarship has often focused on abuse within specific developmental stages (e.g. childhood sexual abuse [CSA], adolescent/adulthood sexual assault), limiting comprehensive insight into how sexual violence unfolds over time and across contexts. This special issue advances the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse's expanded focus on studying sexual victimization across the lifespan by featuring work of early career scholars who are conceptualizing sexual victimization as a dynamic, lifespan phenomenon shaped by intersecting developmental, relational, institutional, and structural forces. Throughout, the contributions of the early career scholars featured in this special issue highlight innovative methodological approaches to studying sexual victimization across the lifespan, while also centering historically underrepresented and underserved populations. As early career investigators themselves, the guest editors of this special issue have compiled a series of research articles that reflect the novel and innovative research approaches currently underway by the next generation of scholars. The findings presented in this series of studies carry meaningful implications for prevention and intervention, informing policy and programmatic efforts through an emphasis on culturally-responsive, survivor-informed, and contextually-tailored approaches. By integrating lifespan perspectives with methodological rigor and applied relevance, the studies in this issue aim to advance the scientific study of sexual violence, while also fostering collaborative efforts to prevent victimization and promote healing across diverse survivor communities.

The purpose of this study was to describe parents' grief process after the death of their child caused by substance abuse. The research data were collected from parents at closed peer discussion forums online using an e-questionnaire with open-ended questions (n = 95) and seven parents were additionally interviewed. The research data were analysed using data-driven content analysis. The parents' grief process after the death of their child from substance abuse included the processing of traumatic emotional experiences, a strain on well-being and functional capacity, grieving and grief avoidance, change in the parenthood identity, disintegration of social relationships, acceptance of the death of the child and hopelessness about the future. Parents' grief process after the child's death from substance abuse is extremely comprehensive, permanently affecting different areas of the parents' lives, including strain on well-being and functional capacity, change in the parenthood identity and disintegration of social relationships.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.7759/cureus.102527.].