Relationship Between Parents Medical and Mental Health With Rate of Maltreatment in a Sample Iranian High School Students

Dear Editor,

Factors contribute to child maltreatment, such as; characteristics of child, living conditions (poverty and overcrowding) and characteristics of parent (physical and psychiatric disorders, substance abuse [1].

The amount of maltreatment toward children can be different depending on the kind of physical or psychological disorder, severity and period of disorder, the amount of disability of disorder, and parents’ judgment and thought disorders. It has been seen that parents who has insight to their psychological disorder, will misbehave their children less. Sometimes, the disorder makes the parent to think of their children as vicious, and expect them inadequately, and begins child abuse to express his violence [1]. Aim of this letter was assessment of relationship between parents medical and mental health with rate of maltreatment in a sample Iranian high school students. In a cross-sectional study, The standard questionnaire [2] was given to 360 students (girls and boys), who studding in high school level of education in Kerman city, after explaining the goal of the study and privacy of their data, and the data was collected The questionnaire contained person’s demographic information and family related factors and 48 self-report questions in order to measure maltreatment; 8 of which were about physical abuse, 28 about emotional abuse, and 12 questions about neglect. Data was analyzed after collection. 36.4% of parents were reported having chronic physical illnesses and 7.8% of them had psychiatric disorders. The total score of maltreatment was 27.6. Previous of history parents’ psychiatric disorders have a meaningful effect on emotional and physical maltreatment and neglect. On the other hand, parents’ physical illness doesn’t have a meaningful relation just with neglect.

In current letter, parents’ physical and psychiatric disorders are effective on total score of maltreatment to children. As it was shown, fathers with psychiatric problems like anxiety and depression, show more child abuse behaviors. That is probably why they use force to solve problems in the family [3].

Because of the atmosphere of these families and excessive sensitivity and expectations of the parents, who have low tolerance threshold because of their chronic illness, and their biased ideas and negative perception of child behavior, child’s behavior is thought worse that it really is. If parents have poor parenting skills, the amount of ma; treatment raises in these families. According to the results, recognizing and treatment of parents’ illnesses are as important as the way they interact with their children.