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Violence of French adolescents toward their parents: characteristics and contexts
Purpose:
To determine the social, familial, and psychiatric characteristics of children who batter their parent(s); and to report clinical vignettes of this phenomenon and contexts which precipitate such violence.
Methods:
In this retrospective study, we analyzed the medical records of the 645 children hospitalized in a child and adolescent psychiatry department between 1987 and 1996.
Results:
The principle findings were that: (a) 3.4% of the patients demonstrate parent battering; (b) the average age of parent batterers is 14 years old, and they are predominately male; and (c) their mothers are more often the victims than their fathers, and there is a high frequency of psychiatric disorders among parents. Seven clinical vignettes have been presented to represent different family contexts of the 22 cases of domestic violence in this study.
Conclusions:
Further studies are needed to deepen our knowledge of violence perpetrated by adolescents toward their parents. A better knowledge of etiological mechanisms involved would permit more preventative action for families at risk.