Prevalence of Child Abuse in High School Students of Bam City (Kerman/Iran) in 2003

Introduction : Child abuse is one of the main problems of our community and it includes all aspects of physical, emotional and sexual abuses. This descriptive study was aimed to determine the prevalence rate of child abuse (physical, emotional, and neglect) in Bam city (Kerman/Iran). Methods: In this study, 562 high school students were selected by multistage sampling. Data were gathered by using a researcher-made questionnaire and analyzed by descriptive and analytic statistics. Results : According to the findings, 20.02% of the students suffered from physical abuse, 24.59% suffered from neglect and 33.16% suffered from emotional abuse. The prevalence of physical abuse in families with housewife mother, addict father and history of divorce was significantly more than other groups (p<0.05).Neglect was lower in students whose mothers had high school education or more. Physical and emotional abuses also were lower in subjects whose parents had high school education or more (p<0.05). Physical abuse and neglect were mostly from paternal side, while emotional abuse was mostly from maternal side. Conclusion : Mental health care centers can use the results of this study in order to have more effective family counselling with parents and make them more familiar with various needs of children based on their age.