Objective: In this study, it was aimed to identify demographic characteristics and psychiatric diagnosis in children and adolescents who presented to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry outpatient clinic.
Method: We retrospectively reviewed records of 343 children and adolescent aged 3-18 years, who referred to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry outpatient clinic at Kahramanmaraş province with exposure to sexual abuse between 2009 and 2012 by judicial authority. In all cases, age, gender, educational status, intelligence level, type and frequency of abuse, degree of familiarity of perpetrator and psychiatric diagnosis according to DSM-IV-TR classification were evaluated.
Results: Majority of the cases were girls (78.7%). Mean age was found as 13.46±3.1 years. It was found that 77.8% of the cases were between 12 and 18 years of age. The most commonly detected type of sexual abuse was touching and/or friction (51.6%). Majority of cases was exposed to sexual for once (54.7%). The most commonly detected perpetrators were previously known individuals (85.1%). It was found that the rate of early marriage was 10.5%. The rate of mental retardation was found as 7.3%. It was found that a psychiatric disorder was detected in 71.4% of the cases, as posttraumatic stress disorder (37.6%) being most commonly detected psychiatric disorder.
Conclusions: The results that majority of sexual abuse cases were adolescent girls, that rate of psychiatric disorders was detected as high, and that posttraumatic stress disorder was the most common psychiatric disorder, were in agreement with literature. Early marriage is an important problem. Education programs and legal measures should be implemented for early marriage. Given the fact that abuse has negative impact on mental health of children, long-term management should be stressed in such cases.