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Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2008)17:200208 DOI 10.1007/s00787-007-0654-8
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
Djaouida Petot Jean-Michel Petot Thomas M. Achenbach
Behavioral and emotional problems of Algerian children and adolescents as reported by parents
Accepted: 8 August 2007 Published online: 24 September 2007
j Abstract Objective To determine the level of behavioral and emotional problems among a sample of Algerian children and adolescents aged 618 years living in Algiers. Method A school-based sample of 1,405 children and adolescents was recruited; problems were assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist lled out by parents or surrogates. Results The scores varied with age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES). Contrary to ndings in other samples, most Problem scores increased with age. As found in many other cultures, girls scored higher than boys on the Internalizing scales, but lower on Externalizing scales. Youths from lower socioeconomic families tended to score higher on some Problem scales. But, above
all, Algerian children and adolescents had raw scores on all Problem scales much higher than those yielded by most previous cross-cultural studies. Conclusions The high level of problems may be attributable to traumatic environmental factors (terrorism and natural catastrophes), but the lack of data from countries that have similar geographic and cultural environments makes it hard to exclude explanations based on cultural factors.
j Key words adolescent Algeria Child Behavior Checklist children cross-cultural
D. Petot, Ph.D. (&) J.-M. Petot, Ph.D. Dpartement de Psychologie Nanterre University: Universit Paris 10 200 avenue de la Rpublique Nanterre Cedex 92001, FranceE-Mail: dpetot@u-paris10.fr
T.M. Achenbach, Ph.D.
Department of Psychiatry University of Vermont 1 South Prospect Street Burlington (VT) 05401, USA
Introduction
Algerian children and adolescents have been exposed to many traumatic events for more than a decade. Although it is generally considered a developing country, Algeria is relatively rich, having large resources of oil and natural gas. The economic and health status is superior to certain parts of Eastern Europe, and the population is not faced with hunger or epidemic or endemic illnesses. However, when we started this study, Algeria had just recovered from upheaval caused by very harsh Islamist terrorism, which was at its height from 1992 to 2005, and in-
cluded individual assassinations, massacres of all inhabitants of certain villages and urban areas, mass kidnapping and rape of women, and...