Associação entre maus-tratos na infância e morbidade psiquiátrica em adolescentes

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Knowledge about the harm caused by exposing a young organism to high levels of stress is relatively recent, as well, the perception of the inherent vulnerability to childhood and adolescence for to develop diseases throught maltreatment victimization, especially, psychiatric disorders. Most of the studies on this subject are mostly carried out on individuals who already have had clinical treatment and / or adult that have been victims in the pass. OBJECTIVE: To investigate mental disorders using a random sample of adolescents, exposed and unexposed to Childhood Maltreatment (CM). Furthermore, to avalue the intensity of depression and anxiety symptoms, as well the association between the severity of the CM victimization and its effect on the development of psychiatric disorders. METHODS: In our study, 105 students were randomly selected from public schools in Porto Alegre, between the ages of 10 and 19 years old, having as other exclusion criteria, adolescents without a history of alcohol and drug abuse, since these factors could have an influence on the occurrence of psychological disorders. The juveniles presenting a history of childhood maltreatment (CM) victimization were allocated to the “with CM” group, and those not victimized in the “without CM” group. The investigation into the suggested diagnoses for mental disorders was performed using comparisons between those exposed to CM and those unexposed to CM. CONCLUSION: This research was innovative in verifying the symptoms related to psychic morbidity in a random sampling of school-aged adolescentes, through an investigation of all five forms of ill-treatment in individuals both exposed and not exposed to CM, that was indentifyed that the historical of CM was a risk factor associated with psychiatric morbidity