Maltreatment in Parent–Child Relationships of Chinese Families with Children Suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Hong Kong: A Qualitative Study

This paper describes the lived experience of maltreatment in parent–child relationships in relation to Chinese children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which emerged from a qualitative study conducted in Hong Kong. Out of a clinical sample of forty-four families, 25 per cent of children reported parental abuse, 21 per cent of parents had suffered from child-to-parent maltreatment and 11 per cent of families had experienced both. Most of the self-disclosures came out naturally in the three phases of the multiple family groups conducted by the authors. The maltreatment experienced was physical in nature, except for four cases of psychological abuse. Maltreatment was the result of escalating parent–child conflicts, triggered in four circumstances: (i) supervision of homework; (ii) parental demand on their children to do something other than playing; (iii) parent's misunderstanding of the child's acting-out behaviours; and (iv) parent's verbal threat of removing the child from home. The narratives underscore the urgent need to develop a complex social work model in helping.