Estimation of the Development of Depression and PTSD in Children Exposed to Sexual Abuse and Development of Decision Support Systems by Using Artificial Intelligence

ABSTRACT

The most common diagnoses after childhood sexual abuse are Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression. The aim of this study is to design a decision support system to help psychiatry physicians in the treatment of childhood sexual abuse. Computer aided decision support system (CADSS) based on ANN, which predicts the development of PTSD and Major Depressive Disorder, using different parameters of the act of abuse and patients was designed. The data of 149 girls and 21 boys who were victims of sexual abuse were included in the study. In the designed CADDS, the gender of the victim, the type of sexual abuse, the age of exposure, the duration until reporting, the time of abuse, the proximity of the abuser to the victim, number of sexual abuse, whether the child is exposed to threats and violence during the abuse, the person who reported the event, and the intelligence level of the victim are used as input parameters. The average accuracy values for all three designed systems were calculated as 99.2%. It has been shown that the system designed by using these data can be used safely in the psychiatric assessment process, in order to differentiate psychiatric diagnoses in the early post-abuse period.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood sexual abuse
• machine learning
• artificial neural networks
• depression
• post-traumatic stress disorder

Disclosure of interest

All the authors declare that they have no conflicts to report.

Ethical Standards

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Inonu University Non-interventional Clinical Research and Publication Ethics Committee and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ilknur Ucuz

Ilknur Ucuz is an academic member working in many field of child and adolescent psychiatry. Machine learning, play therapy, and neurodevelopmental disorders are areas of particular interest.

Ali Ari

Ali Ari is Assistant Professor in Depertmant of Computer Science İnonu University. He is interested in artificial intelligent, image processing, signal processing and data mining.

Ozlem Ozel Ozcan

Ozlem Ozel Ozcan, is a Prof. Dr. in Inonu University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Ozgu Topaktas

Ozgu Topaktas, is a doctor working in the field of psychiarty. In February 2020, she completed her specialty training by conducting a thesis on schizophrenia genetics.

Merve Sarraf

Merve Sarraf works as a doctor at Inonu University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is active in teaching and researching about child psychiatry.

Ozlem Dogan

Ozlem Dogan, is a doctor working in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. In September 2019, she completed her specialty education with her thesis study evaluating biological markers in adolescents with suicide attempts and self-injurious behavior.