Retrospective Review of Forensic Cases Referred to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study is to explore the cause of forensic report orders, socio-demographic characteristics and comorbid mental disorders in children and adolescents passed to court for any reason and referred to a child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinical by judicial authority in Şanlıurfa province. Materials and Methods: In this study, we retrospectively reviewed files of 64 cases which referred to a child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinic for forensic psychiatric assessment between December, 2018 and December, 2020. The socio-demographic characteristics, the event underlying referral, coverage of question asked by judicial authority, smoking or alcohol and substance abuse, intelligence level, comorbid mental disorders and socio-demographic characteristic of parents were reviewed in children referred by judicial authorities. We used the Chi-square test to compare socio-demographic characteristics and comorbid psychiatric diagnoses and The Mann Whitney U test to compare numerical variables. Results: It was found that 46.9% of the children were referred due to juvenile delinquents while 12.5% due to being subjected to abuse and 25.0% due to early marriage. Of the juvenile delinquents, 90% were boys with median age of 15 years while 62.5% of victims were girls with median age of 13.5 years. The findings show that 63.3% of juvenile delinquents and 62.5% of victims were not attending to school. The incidence of psychiatric diagnosis was 53.3% among juvenile delinquents while it was 50% among victims. All of the children presented with request of early marriage were girls with median age of 16 years. The results show that 43.8% of cases were pregnant at presentation and 93.8% did not receive education appropriate for their age. Conclusions: It was found that more than one-half of juvenile delinquents and victims were not attending school in that study. In addition, it was found that male gender preponderance was observed among juvenile delinquents. There is a need for further studies to determine groups of under risk.