Marián Fedor, Slavomír Nosáľ, Ján Buchanec, Marián Fedor ml., Jana Ucháľová, Peter Bánovčin
Aim of the study: Our goal was to establish the prevalence of psychical forms of child abuse in Slovakia, based on the occurence of its particular types. Further, we aimed to analyze the influence of major social and enviromental risk factors on the prevalence of abuse. Method: To accomplish the goal we used questionnaire method of research. Questionnaire contained 21 questions formulated to cover all the forms of neglect and child abuse. We evaluated the percentage of children that experienced any episode of psychical abuse in their life. Results: Studied group consisted of 695 randomly chosen respondents with the average age of 18.8 years. We found out that 68.3 % of children experienced at least one form of psychic abuse in their life. 3.6 % of children were severely abused (5 or more forms of abuse), 32.6 % were less severely abused (2-4 forms) and 32.1 % of children experienced 1 form of psychic abuse. Conclusion: Our study confirmed, that child neglect is the most common form of CAN syndrome, represented in 68.3 % children of studied group. Situation in Slovakia is equivalent to Western countries and Czech Republic. Comparison of studies depends on the defining criteria of psychic abuse and design of the study. Concept of unified classification scheme is necessary for precise cooperation and relevant comparison of various studies.