Evaluation of Parental Attachment, Emotion Regulation and Theory of Mind Skills of Offender and Victim Children

Aim: Studies have shown that offending and victimized children in the forensic system have difficulties in attachment characteristics, emotion regulation and mind reading. The number of studies on emotion regulation and mind reading with offender and victimized children was limited. The aim of our study was to compare the offender and victimized children in terms of attachment characteristics, emotion regulation characteristics, mind reading characteristics and to examine the correlations of these variables. Method: The study was planned as a cross-sectional study. It was carried out in Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University Medical Faculty Hospital Child and Adolescent Psychiatry clinics between January 2021 and July 2021. Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children and Wechsler Intelligence Test for Adults were applied to all cases admitted between the specified dates. Cases diagnosed with intellectual disability were not included in the study. Kiddie- Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia Interview Inventory for School-Age Children- Present and Lifetime Version was applied to determine the psychiatric disorders of the children included in the study. Parent and Peer Attachment Inventory-Short Form was used to evaluate attachment characteristics, Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale was used to determine emotion regulation difficulties, Mind Reading from Eyes Test and Faces Test were used to evaluate mind reading skills. Results: Fifty nine cases out of 80 cases who applied to our outpatient clinic for the preparation of a forensic report between the specified dates were included in the study. Of the cases included, 26 are child victims and 33 are offending children. The mean age of the victims was 14.6 ± 2.2 years, and the mean age of offending children was 15.5 ± 1.4 years. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of age (p> 0.05). We found that 92.3 % of the victim children were female and 87.9 % of the offender children were male. 33.6 % of the children in the sample dropped out of school. 80 % of children who drop out of school are offender children. A significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of gender and dropping out of school (p< 0.05). In the total sample, 66.1% of the cases were diagnosed with at least one mental illness. The most common diagnoses of victim children are specific learning disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder. Offender children are mostly diagnosed with conduct disorder and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. When the victim and offender children were evaluated according to the parent and peer attachment inventory, the victim children's scores were statistically significantly lower in the parent alienation subscale and alienation from the parents increased the victimization risk (p: 0.010). There was no statistically significant difference between the other subscales of the parent and peer attachment inventory between the groups (p> 0.05). When the victim and offender children were evaluated according to the emotion regulation difficulties scale, a statistically significant reduction was found in the "non-acceptance" subscale of the victim children compared to the offender children, and a statistically significant increase was found in the "goals" subscale (p values; 0.031, 0.045, respectively). When the victim and offender children were evaluated according to the mind-reading and faces test, we found that the victim children recognized the positive emotions from the eyes and the emotions from the faces statistically significantly better than the offender children (p values; 0.003, 0.046, respectively). Conclusion: The findings of our study suggest that difficulties in attachment characteristics, emotion regulation skills and mind reading abilities of both victim and offending children may be risk factors for victimization and delinquency; the alienation of victim children from their parents and their lack of accepting emotions and knowing the purpose of emotions may increase the risk; it was found that the emotion recognition skills of delinquent children may increase the risk of exhibiting criminal behavior. It is considered that interventions to improve emotion regulation and mind reading skills in children and adolescents can reduce both the risk of victimization and crime, but further studies with larger samples are needed.