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Objective: Divorce means destroying the family. Children need to live together with their family, family’s care and support. Some authors have determined strong negative effects on children’s psychological, intellectual and social development from divorced families. In this research, we aimed to determine which psychological disorders are more common among children whose parents are divorced.
Methods: This research was done by retrospectively reviewing the records of patients admitted for the first time in 2012 to Mersin University School of Medicine, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry policlinic and whose parents were divorced. Patient’s age, gender, time elapsed after divorce, drug use, observation time in policlinic and diagnosis were entered in SPSS for Windows 11.5 and statistically analyzed.
Results: One thousand six hundred fifty-five patients were admitted to the outpatient clinic in 2012. 159 (9.6%) of them came from divorced parents. Their average age was 11.3±3.7 (min: 3, max: 18). Of the 159 children with divorced parents 88 (55.3%) were male and 71 (44.7%) were female. Average time elapsed after divorce was 64.6 (min: 1, max: 204) months. Patients’ common diagnosis according to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) criteria were: 64 (40.3%) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), 37 (23.3%) depression, 31 (19.5%) sexual abuse, 20 (12.6%) adjustment disorder. 20 (12.6%) of them came for consulting though they had no psychological disorder.
Conclusion: According to ADHD prevalence studies, 5-10% of the community is affected by this disorder, but in our research, 40% of the children whose parents were divorced had this disorder, which seems to be very high. The reason for this high rate can be sought in various issues such as lone parents who cannot support their child’s ADHD symptoms on their own and are more likely to present at the polyclinic, or these children can cause more and more problems between parents and this situation leads to divorce. The causes for the high rate of depression among these children may be that they can be influenced by problems between parents after divorce or be abused and emotionally neglected or wronged by parents’ behaviors during the divorce process and the chaotic situation in the family before divorce. In addition to emotional neglect, there are many children suffering from health neglect, with their family not taking them to hospital. Therefore, it is predicted that the real rate of depression is higher than this rate. In our research, the rate of sexual abuse was 12.6%, which is very high and perturbing. This shows that children of divorced parents are more exposed to sexual abuse. Children’s and parents’ awareness must be raised about this situation. It is important that neglect and abuse risk factors must be determined among children whose parents are divorced; in this case, social service experts must follow risky children by visiting their homes and if necessary provide consultation, health, education, care and shelter resolutions, as mentioned in The Law of Child Protection in Turkey.