The sociodemographic and clinical evaluation of sexually abused children
Küçük Resim Yok
Tarih
2010
Yazarlar
Dergi Başlığı
Dergi ISSN
Cilt Başlığı
Yayıncı
Erişim Hakkı
info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
Özet
Objective: Childhood sexual abuse is an important and complex adverse life experience which leads to serious psychological and psychiatric outcomes. Although child sexual abuse has for a long time been recorded in literature of science in many parts of the world, the affinity and aware of child abuse have been increased in Turkey in recent years. The aim is determine the sociodemographic characteristics and psychiatric diagnosis of children reported with sexual abuse in child psychiatry department of medical school of Erciyes and Inönü University in Kayseri and Malatya between 01/01/2008- 12/31/2008. Method: The researchers have retrospectively examined the data of the children and the adults aged between 0 to 18, who suffered from sexual abuse and were referred to the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of Erciyes and Inönü University for the forensic evaluation between 1 January and 31 December 2008, for the characteristics including age, sex, level of education, and type and frequency of abuse and for the psychiatric diagnoses determined by DSM-IV-TR. Records from Child Psychiatry Departments are examined. Results: Cases were composed of 89 (70%) girls and 38 (30%) boys, the total number of children and adolescents were 127 and these were aged 4 to 17. Touching to the body for the sexual arousal is the most reported type of the sexual abuse in 58 (45.7%) cases. According to the psychiatric evaluation children have acute stress reaction (ASR) in 18.9% (n=24), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 18.1% (n=23), the adjustment disorder in 10.2% (n=13). Discussion: Although the people especially the children living in developing countries such as Turkey are exposed to traumatic mental experiences, there were no data related to the frequency and distribution of the definite and official cases of sexual abuse as well as the data related to the frequencies and effects of the traumatic mental events due to the sexual abuse are extremely limited. Given these data, the 127 cases applied to our clinic during one year through the legal agencies may be the visible part of the iceberg. Consistent with the literature, our finding, in which 70% of the cases were girls, shows that the girls are exposed to the sexual abuse than boys, however the finding that 38 (44%) of 127 cases were 14 and 15 ages is different from the literature. The last finding may be accounted for the increased reported rates by adolescents due to their awareness about sexuality. Consistent with international studies, ASR and PTSD is the most frequent diagnosis in our study. Sexual abuse in childhood is an important problem of the public health and accepted as a risk factor for a group of psychiatric disorders in the long run. Therefore, displaying the cases of sexual abuse, reporting the cases to the appropriate institutions, and treatment and rehabilitation of the cases are very important.
Açıklama
Anahtar Kelimeler
Children, Sexual abuse, Sociodemographic characteristics
Kaynak
Yeni Symposium
WoS Q Değeri
Scopus Q Değeri
N/A
Cilt
48
Sayı
4
