دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی طول عمر و شیوع خشونت در کودکان در سال گذشته در 9 شهرستان بالکان - NCBI 2018

Abstract

Background: Children’s exposure to violence is a major public health issue. The Balkan epidemiological study on Child Abuse and Neglect project aimed to collect internationally comparable data on violence exposures in childhood. Methods: A three stage stratifed random sample of 42,194 school-attending children (response rate: 66.7%) in three grades (aged 11, 13 and 16 years) was drawn from schools in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. Children completed the ICAST-C questionnaire, which measures children’s exposure to violence by any perpetrator. Results: Exposure rates for psychological violence were between 64.6% (FYROM) and 83.2% (Greece) for lifetime and 59.62% (Serbia) and 70.0% (Greece) for past-year prevalence. Physical violence exposure varied between 50.6% (FYROM) and 76.3% (Greece) for lifetime and 42.5% (FYROM) and 51.0% (Bosnia) for past-year prevalence. Sexual violence fgures were highest for lifetime prevalence in Bosnia (18.6%) and lowest in FYROM (7.6%). Lifetime contact sexual violence was highest in Bosnia (9.8%) and lowest in Romania (3.6%). Past-year sexual violence and contact sexual violence prevalence was lowest in Romania (5.0 and 2.1%) and highest in Bosnia (13.6 and 7.7% respectively). Self-reported neglect was highest for both past-year and lifetime prevalence in Bosnia (48.0 and 20.3%) and lowest in Romania (22.6 and 16.7%). Experiences of positive parental practices were reported by most participating children in all countries. Conclusions: Where signifcant diferences in violence exposure by sex were observed, males reported higher expo‑ sure to past-year and lifetime sexual violence and females higher exposure to neglect. Children in Balkan countries experience a high burden of violence victimization and national-level programming and child protection policy mak‑ ing is urgently needed to address this.

Conclusions

Research on children’s exposure to violence has an increased social utility function over and above providing epidemiological evidence which can help predict the burden of mental health. Providing a robust evidence base for the understanding of the phenomenon of children’s victimization can ultimately facilitate efective social and child protection policy design and implementation. From this angle, current evidence indicates new targets for social policies and awareness raising interventions that could tackle currently invisible aspects of the phenomenon of children’s exposure to violence. In this context, this particular study generated a frst quantitative measurement of the magnitude of the problem in the participant countries and served as a tool for awareness raising among professional communities and policy makers. It created a space for further research not just to verify its fndings, but also for shedding more light on all aspects of children’s victimization which include medical, mental, psycho-social and human rights challenges for modern societies.