Infantile psychological maltreatment characterization in a health area of the Versalles “”Reynold García” polyclinic

Abstract

A cross-sectional descriptive research was carried out with the objective of characterizing the infantile psychological maltreatment in children attending the consultation of Psychology of Versalles health area, Matanzas, in the period covering form January 1st to March 31st 2012. The universe was made up by 50 children aged 7-11 years, 31 male and 19 female, who were attended in that period. Once the informed consent was obtained for the family members to voluntarily participate in the study and to collect the necessary information, we applied the infantile psychological maltreatment questionnaire of Joaquin de Paúl Ochotorena, an already validated instrument, adjusted to the work aims. The psychological maltreatment was identified in 100 % of the cases, prevailing manifestations of rejection (86 %), isolation (72 %) and menacing (68 %). We noticed that male gender showed higher values in all the categories. We concluded that infantile psychological maltreatment is a common factor for children with emotional disorders treated in psychology consultations, in spite of their gender and age. We recommend developing an educative intervention on infantile maltreatment in parents of the health area children aged 7-11 years and promoting working practices among professionals dealing with the infantile mental health in the Primary Health Care level, for preventing, identifying and treating this phenomenon.