Citation

Atilola O. BMC Public Health 2012; 12(1): 554.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/1471-2458-12-554

PMID

22835146

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The combination of adverse social indicators and a predominantly youthful population in Nigeria puts the country at a risk of an explosion in the number of youth coming in contact with the juvenile justice and social welfare systems. Despite this risk, custodial childcare systems in Nigeria are still poorly developed with both juvenile offenders and neglected adolescents coming in contact with the systems being kept in the same incarcerating facility. To have an understanding of the differential needs of these adolescents and have a template for the design of appropriate programme and services for different categories of youth when the Nigerian juvenile justice and social-welfare systems eventually evolves, there is a need to determine the common and specific social, physical and psychological needs of the different categories of youth being given the same kind of treatment in childcare custodial services in the country. METHODS: Data on pre-contact family structure and functioning, neurological and anthropometric profiles, and lifetime prevalence of common mental health problems were generated using pre-designed questionnaires, neurological examination and the K-SADS respectively. The results for the adolescents on 'criminal code' and those admitted as a case of child neglect were compared using chi-square and odd ratios. RESULTS: Participants were 211 adolescents comprising 158 on 'criminal code' and 53 declared as 'neglected'. There were a lot of similarities in pre-contact static and dynamic family structure, social circumstance and lifetime mental health among the two groups of adolescents. For instance they were equally likely to come from 'broken' homes and families in transition; have experienced street life and had high prevalence of lifetime exposure to multiple traumatic events and PTSD. A major difference however was that the child neglect group especially and the 'criminal code' group to some extent had worse indices in some distinct areas. CONCLUSIONS: The similarities and differences in the quality of pre-contact primary support resources, social circumstance and lifetime mental health suggests that child neglect and delinquency in Nigeria may be different points of a continuum. This calls for a common preventive and management strategy but with specific emphasis in certain aspects.

Language: en