Psychiatric assessment of child victims of sexual abuse by Ham A and D Scale: A Descriptive Study

  • Soumeek Chowdhuri Tutor, Department of Forensic and State Medicine, Calcutta National Medical College, Kolkata, India.
  • Paramita Ray Associate Professor, Institute of Psychiatry (Centre of excellence), IPGMER and SSKM hospital, Kolkata, India.
  • Parthapratim Mukhopadhayay Professor and Head, Dept of FSM, Burdwan Medical College, Burdwan, India
Keywords: Medical Cannabis; Malaysia; legalization of medical Cannabis.

Abstract

In today’s world man finds himself exposed to the temptations of (This entire sentence is not objective, scientific terminology) (These crimes are not limited to TODAY’s world, the perpetrator is not always a man, and evil is not a scientific subject to be included in a scholarly paper, it is subjective to individual beliefs and laws). A movement should have been augmented to fight against these (do not use dramatic subjective terms) societal crimes, which forms a sort of mental purge for those so inclined to take advantage of their positions of trust. Child abuse has historically been a common offence against children without sufficient social and legal sanctions throughout the world. To deal with child sexual abuse cases while treating the victims, it’s necessary to assess the patient’s psychiatric health. The victims were examined after obtaining informed consent from the child or from their guardian. Results The patient’s psychiatric health was determined by the Hamilton Scale for depression and anxiety. The total number of cases was 52. Of the 52 cases 33 patients (i.e. 63.5 % of the cases) consented to undergo medical examination. 19 victims (36.5%) did not give their consent for their medical examination. The mean Hamilton A score for anxiety was 19.39 and mean Hamilton D score for depression was 28.81. Conclusions When the accused is known to the victim most cases are associated with severe or very severe degree of depression; and moderate or severe anxiety. After completing a detail study of the violations of minor girls it is concluded that it would be beneficial for the global society to take initiatives to minimize the incidence of such acts.
Published
2019-11-10