An Overview of a Hospital-Based Child Advocacy Center’s Experience from Turkey

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the present study was to investigate sociodemographic variables, features of sexual abuse (SA), and first psychiatric evaluation results of abused children, and to analyze the relation of the psychiatric evaluation results to the children’s age and gender, type and duration of abuse, abuser–child relationship, and marital status of the children’s parents, at one of the most experienced Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) in Turkey. All data were obtained from reports prepared by child and adolescent psychiatrists. The sample of this study consists of 436 child sexual abuse (CSA) cases who admitted İzmir CAC between April 2014 and November 2015. The statistical analyses yielded significant relations between psychiatric symptoms and chronic abuse, the gender of the children, and type of abuse. Suicidal ideation and behaviors due to sexual abuse (SA) were also examined. According to our results, it is fair to say that children exposed to SA benefit from immediate psychiatric help because of their vulnerability for psychiatric disorders due to abuse. In this context, CACs are very important multidisciplinary establishments to determine children’s multiple needs to ease their trauma with collaborative teamwork. Psychiatric evaluation should be part of this multidisciplinary context.