Psychiatric Morbidities among Male Juvenile Offenders: A Cross Sectional Comparison in Bangladesh.

Inmates of Juvenile Developmental Centers are the special group of youth population who are in conflict with law and are vulnerable to psychiatric disorders. It was aimed to see the variation of prevalence and type of psychiatric disorders in institutionalized male juvenile offenders and non-offenders of same age, sex and socioeconomic group in the community. The association of mental disorders was examined in 138 male inmates of Juvenile Development Centers and 138 randomly selected comparison subjects in community. One stage-structured assessment of psychopathology was carried out by using a structured and valid Bangla version of the Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA). Psychiatric diagnosis was established after scoring from DAWBA that is actually corresponds to diagnosis of ICD-10 for research. It was revealed that, of those who were in conflict with law, 57.2% had mental disorder, whereas 9.4% of non-offenders had psychiatric disorder. Among the offenders with psychiatric disorders, most of them (16.7%) suffered from Conduct Disorder (CD), followed by Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). On the other hand, among the non-offenders with psychiatric disorder 2.2% suffered from CD. Study revealed that psychiatric disorders are more prevalent among the male juvenile offenders with comparison to non-offenders. Broad-based multi centered and cross cultural replication study can generalize the findings.