Psychological violence in the family context and adolescent mental health

Abstract

Objective: in this article we tried to estimate the association and the odds ratio for suffering psychological violence (PV) in the family context and the juvenile mental health. Methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted from January 2011 to September 2011, with a sample of 231 adolescent outpatients from a tertiary public pediatric hospital in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Results: it was found that 26.4% were categorized as suffering from severe PV. By assessing mental health problems through the Youth Self-Report (YSR) scale, it was found that 20.4% had at least one behavioral problem at the clinical level, especially in the association with severe VF that anxiety/depression presents OR = 20.57, social problems OR = 10.89, thinking problems OR = 10.16, aggressive behaviors OR = 8.14 and
other behavioral problems oscillated with OR between 4.07 and 7.59. A low resilience potential was found in 30.7% of the respondents, who, in association with severe family history, showed that the chance of having low resilience is almost four times, demonstrating the severity of the occurrence of mental health among the victims of severe PV. Conclusions: the results indicate the importance of the identification of PV in the family context as a factor of prevention of mental health problems, as well as the importance of investing in the promotion of resilience as a form of protection against PV suffered in the family context.