Article Review - "depressive Symptoms and Suicidality in Physically Abused Children"

"Writing the Report of the Research Article"

ARTICLE "Depressive Symptoms and Suicidality in Physically Abused Children."

This Article has been published by American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 71 (1) on January 2001. The researchers are Ricky Finzi, PH.D., Anca Ram, M.D., Dan Shnit, PH.D., Dov Har-Evan, M.A., Sam Tyano, M.D., and Abraham Weizman, M.D. This Psychological research is from pages 98 - 107. The main idea of the research was to find out the depressive and suicidal potential among three categories of children first one who were physically abused, second who were neglected by their parents and third who were neither neglected nor abused.

The sample of 114 children aged 6 - 12 years were studied by dividing them into three groups on the basis of ill-treatment: group 1 (the study group) consisted of 41 physically abused children; group 2 (first control group) consisted of 38 children neglected; group 3 (second control group) consisted of 35 children who were neither abused nor neglected. The sample contained more boys (61.4%) than girls (38.6). The research was conducted in the central urban area of Israel. The questionnaires were completed in one hour but the processing of the data took two months.

The measure or the procedure for the following study was described in the article in two portions.

1. Child Depression: It consists of 27 items, each describes three levels of depressive symptomatology, from which one is select which best characterizes them. From the article we observe that "Kovacs and Beck (1977) have claimed that the CDI probes emotional, cognitive, motivational, vegetative and behavioral dimensions." There was another way of evaluation was made according to the article which was Cronbach's Alpha and item total correlations which showed the value for the 27 CDI items (α = 80), and for cognitive (α = 70) and behavioral (α = 69). The lower values were obtained for the social (α = 61), emotional (α = 55) and vegetative (α = 49) subscales. The groups were compared by finding the mean. The scores ranged from 0 to 20 scales. Higher scores show more severe depression.

2. Child Abuse and Behavior: The researchers made an interview with a series of yes and no questions which evaluates assaultive, destructive and suicidal behavior by observing present and past effects, aggression and antisocialism among children with comparison of family background, death concept, ego functions and defense mechanisms. Subscale item are either 0 or 1, or 0-2. The higher scores mean severe types of behavior disorder. Suicidality had three symptoms: suicidal behavior (verbalized suicidal ideation, threats or act), suicidal expression (ways selected by individuals), risk taking behavior (example climbing high places or drinking toxic solutions). There were series of questions been asked