The impact of domestic violence on the mental health and psychosocial functioning of children and adolescents: abroad experience of diagnostics

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the foreign experience of professional monitoring of children exposed to domestic violence, which is characterized by structured approaches and the wide use of short screening tests-questionnaires for all involved parties - children, parents, teachers, nurses, pediatricians, and mental health specialists. For diagnosis, tools recommended by the international community of specialists in the field of mental health protection of children and adolescents are provided. There are ready-made test-batteries for comprehensive routine assessment of treatment progress that assess indicators of mental health and clinical disorders for adolescents aged 11–18 years and are based on information from adolescents, caregivers and clinicians. They are appropriate for use as screening tools and/or to monitor changes in symptoms over time, assess the outcome of therapy, focus on treatment processes, for example, the therapeutic alliance, treatment expectations. The review pays special attention to a method that gives a global assessment of the psyche, namely the “Pediatric Symptom Checklist” method by M. Jellinek and M. Murphy and colleagues (PSC and Y-PSC versions), which is successfully used to screen for psychosocial problems children This tool has several significant advantages - it has a wide range of action, namely targeting various symptoms of a child’s psychosocial disorders (and not just one: depression or anxiety, or fears, or dissociation, or behavior disorder, etc.); it is very easy and economical in terms of implementation and administration (it takes only 3-5 minutes to execute and the same to process); it clearly distinguishes children who already need additional attention and help from specialists in psychological and psychiatric profiles, and can be used to assess the dynamics of the condition and the effectiveness of assistance. In addition, it conceptually corresponds to the theoretical model of T. M. Achenbach and reveals a violation of the child’s psyche in both ways - internalization and externalization - as a result of adverse developmental conditions. This tool is quite actively used in modern science and clinical practice, it provides important results during the study of psychological problems of children who have experienced domestic or other types of violence, have post-traumatic stress disorder, and experienced displacement from military conflict zones