Retrospective evaluation of the psychosocial, psychiatric and forensic features of the forensic cases referred to A university hospital

Objective: The objective of our study is to determine the situations in which children and adolescents are at risk of committing or exposure to crime by evaluating the psychosocial, psychiatric and forensic characteristics of cases who were directed to our forensic clinic by legal authority fort he purpose of forensic reporting. Method: The clinical files that were browsed in our study belong to 150 cases that randomly selected amongst 750 cases who were between the ages of 4 to 18 and were directed to Ege University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Forensic Outpatient Clinic by legal authority for the purpose of forensic reporting which were prepared in between 01.06.2012 and 29.02.2016 after clinical evaluation of forensic council. The sociodemographic characteristics predominantly age, gender, educational level, family features, life circumstances, the legal processes, orders of legal authorities, psychiatric problems that occured after forensic events of the cases were decumented. The cases were categorised in 3 main groups as sexual abused (SA), children driven to crime (CDC), others and intergroup comparisons were performed according to the sociodemographic, psychiatric and legal features that were noted above. Results: While female gender is predominant in SA group; it was determined that male gender is predominant in SSÇ group and gender distribution were found significantly different (p<0,001) between groups. It was found that girls in SA group were in between the ages of 5 to 18 and the mean age of that girls was 13,12 +_3,54 and boys in SA group were in between the ages of 13 to 18 and the mean age of that boys was 15,13 +_1,31. On the other hand It was stated that girls in CDC group were in between the ages of 14 to 16 and the mean age of that girls was 14,83 +_0,75 and boys in CDC group were in between the ages of 13 to 18 and the mean age of that boys was 15,13 +_1,31. Relative to SA group it was seen that the mean ages of CDC group is higher, the presence of psychiatric illness before the legal situation is more common in CDC and maternal educational level of that group was lower. Also these parameters were found statistically different in two groups (p<0.001). The frequency of psychiatric disease in SA group was 45,4 % and the most common psychiatric diagnose was major depressive disorder (21,6%) whereas the second most common psychiatric diagnose was post traumatic stress disorder (17,5%). In SA group, it was found that 66% of the cases have no permenant psychiatric disorder. All WISC-R scores (i.e. verbal, performance and total scores) were lower in CDC group comparing to other two groups and mental retardation was more frequent in CDC group. Conclusion: In our study gender, age, mental capacity, the number of individuals that live together, psychiatric disease presence before the legal event and maternal educational level were found significantly different in between SA and CDC group, however other parameters were not found significantly different between the groups.