Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of child abuse and neglect (CAN) cases. Subjects were 102 cases that were clinically assessed by the multidisciplinary hospital team. Early and late childhood cases (according to the age at first abuse) were compared by means of characteristics of abuse. Among the 102 subjects, 64 were female and 38 were male (mean age: 8.68 years). Being abused by someone within the family was found to be significantly higher in preschool children compared to children in late childhood. 27.5% (n: 28) of the cases concomitantly had low socioeconomic and educational level and high parental psychological problems and 64.8% had psychiatric problems. A limited number of studies have compared characteristics of early and late childhood abuse considering the age of onset of maltreatment. Consistent with the literature, our study showed that early age of onset of maltreatment is a poor prognostic factor in many ways.
Copyright and license
Copyright © 2012 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.