ABSTRACT

Our results can contribute to the determination of factors that adversely affect the mental health of children guided by justice systems and to create targeted mental interventions. It also emphasizes that forensic assessment can be an opportunity for many children to meet unmet mental health needs.

While the average age of 83 patients who participated in the study was 13.93±2.32 year, 68.7% (n=57) of them were men. Justice systems are most often directed to assess whether the cases are capable of discriminating (%83.1, n=69). It was determined that 68.1% (n=47) of these cases were children driving to committing crime and 31.9% (n=22) were children who were victims of sexual abuse. The total intelligence scores and frequency of school attendance of children driving to committing crime were significantly lower than other forensic cases (p = 0.01, p = 0.04, respectively). In addition, it was found that the frequency of continuing to formal education was significantly higher for children driving to committing crime without recidivism compared to with recidivism (p = 0.01). It was found that the average age of children who were victims of sexual abuse was lower than the average age of other forensic cases (p = 0.01).

The sample of the study was composed of children and adolescents who were directed by the justice systems between February 2019 and February 2020 to Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Yıldırım Beyazıt Training and Research Hospital Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinics. The information about the reasons for referring the participants to the clinic, their sociodemographic features, and psychiatric diagnoses determined by clinical interview based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 were retrospectively scanned.

Although the frequency of forensic evaluation requested from child and adolescent psychiatry clinics has increased in recent years, studies in this field in our country are very limited. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of children and adolescents whose forensic reports were requested by the justice systems for various reasons.