Abstract:

Adolescence is known as the period when the crime rate is highest in lifespan. Crimes exposed to or committed by children and adolescents constitute the subject of child and adolescent forensic reports. We aimed to examine the clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of children referred to the child psychiatry polyclinic for a forensic report and compare the features of forensic cases following changing the law regarding child abuse. 81 patients who applied to the child psychiatry policlinic between 2016 and 2017 with a request for a forensic report were included. The clinic and sociodemographic data were collected with the help of 45-minute interview made by a child psychiatrist. The mental status of patients was determined by Porteus and Kent E-G-Y tests. The majority of the subjects in the study were the children who were dragged to crime (CDC) (71.6%), and 91.4% of CDCs were male children. The most common crimes to be committed by CDCs were injury (24.1%), theft (20.7%), sexual offense (19%), damage (12.1%), opposition to law No. 5682 (8.6%) and substance use (5.2%). The most common diagnoses were attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (27.6%) and conduct disorder (20.7%). Reports in the second place are the reports related to marriage consent and distribution in mental health (12.3%). It has been observed that there is a decrease in the reports related to the disruption of mental health’s of sexual abuse victims, after changing the laws. When we consider the frequency and timing of forensic report requests regarding marriage, there might be a need to a necessary legal arrangement to prevent the child marriage.

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