“Baby Shaker” App Inspires New Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention Effort

Posted: 13 May 2009 02:42 AM PDT on the Prevent Child Abuse New York blog

In response to the notorious “Baby Shaker” application briefly for sale in Apple’s application store last month, Prevent Child Abuse America has joined forces with the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation and two of the nation’s leading doctors who are experts in the prevention of Abusive Head Trauma (Shaken Baby Syndrome) in calling upon Apple and AT&T to act immediately to prevent a potential disaster.

In addition, the groups announced a joint effort with Soma Creates, an iPhone application development firm, to create applications to prevent SBS. These applications will be developed with special instruction from Dr. Desmond Runyan of UNC Chapel Hill and Dr. Robert Murphy of Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Health.

Marilyn Barr, Founder of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, stated, “We are very pleased to join with one of the leading child abuse advocacy organizations in the country to mitigate the current crisis and to work collaboratively on this new prevention effort.”

She added, “We are still calling on Apple to step in and use their technical expertise to help these leaders in the field of child abuse prevention to develop further applications; however, prevention of Abusive Head Trauma cannot wait for Apple to act which is why we chose to move forward ourselves.”

Josh Heidebrecht, President of Soma Creates Inc., offered to help develop the new application after reading about the launch and subsequent removal of the infamous “Baby Shaker” application last month.

“I was shocked to see anyone finding humor in an iPhone game that had players shake a baby until it dies. When people do not understand an issue, a common reaction is to respond with humor; so I am excited to work with Dr. Runyan and Dr. Murphy to help raise awareness of the seriousness of brain injuries by building fun and interactive iPhone toys to help educate both parents and children about child abuse,” Heidebrecht stated. His company is the premier producer of iPhone interactive toys for children and parents and is donating the proceeds from their newest iPhone application to The Sarah Jane Brain Foundation.

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While these efforts on behalf of at risk infants are critical, I want people to understand that brain damage from abuse to infants has a far wider risk than we understand or realize.

Consistently harmful and traumatic caregiver interactions with infants create brain damage as well.  Because these experiences are built into the forming brain, they alter the way the brain develops.  This is brain damage!!  The consequences of living a lifespan with one of these altered brains is suffering which occurs on many levels and often prevents the survivor from having a chance to live a happy life in a state of well-being.

Chronic maltreatment of infants creates insecure attachment disorders and changes not only the way the brain and resulting mind will develop, but alters the brain’s manifestation of ‘self’, and changes the development of the nervous system as well as the immune system.  Simply keeping an infant alive so it can develop in a malevolent world is NOT a good enough response to abuse of infants.  (Please refer to the work of Dr. Allan Schore and of Dr. Bruce Perry, both of whose books are available at Amazon.com.)

Educating the public about this fact is what this blog is all about.