About one in eight children and adolescents in the U.S. will be mistreated by adults.
The new study's findings are higher than the about 0.8 percent of U.S. children who are found to be victims of maltreatment, Reuters reported.
"That 12.5 percent of children get to a point where their maltreatment is confirmed highlights just how big of a risk factor this is for children," Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at Yale University in New Haven, told Reuters.
Maltreatment can range from neglect to sexual abuse; they can have long-lasting effects.
"These instances of neglect are extreme enough that they could have really detrimental effects on the children for the long haul," Wildeman said.
The researchers' analysis encompassed 5.7 million treatment who had confirmed maltreatment reports.
The rates if maltreatment are higher in minority groups; one in five black children will experience maltreatment from an adult. Younger children were at a higher risk of maltreatment.
"Anybody who does work on child health and inequalities should incorporate child maltreatment in a more substantial way," he said.
The researchers believe the findings highlight the need to perform additional research on the subject and look into improving abuse-prevention programs.
"I think people sweep it under the rug because it's so rare, but these data show we can't do that anymore," Wildeman said.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concluded that additional research is required in order to determine whether child maltreatment programs can effectively protect children from this type of abuse.
"Child maltreatment is a risk factor for poor health throughout the life course. Existing estimates of the proportion of the US population maltreated during childhood are based on retrospective self-reports. Records of officially confirmed maltreatment have been used to produce annual rather than cumulative counts of maltreated individuals," the study abstract published in Jama Pediatrics stated.
