Complications of Rape in Adolescents and Rehabilitation of the victims: A Narrative Review Article

Adolescents are vulnerable groups who experience one-third of all new cases of abuse and higher rates of sexual abuse. Evidence of sexual abuse of adolescents has been shown to have short-term and long-term effects on their psychological functions. Therefore, the present study was performed to review the complications and rehabilitation of adolescent rape.

This study was conducted by searching Persian and English databases including Elsevier Proquest, UpToDate, Scopus, Magiran, Irandoc, SID, Iran medex, Sciencedirect, Ebsco, Pubmed, Google Scholar. To extract related articles, the keywords rape, adolescents, prevention, rehabilitation and their Latin equivalents were used: sexual abuse, adolescents, prevention, and rehabilitation. In this study, articles published from January 2000 to December 2016 that aimed to investigate the effects and rehabilitation of adolescent rape were considered. Criteria for inclusion in this study were writing in Persian or English, working on rape in the adolescent age group, reporting complications and rehabilitation in adolescent rape, choosing the right method in the studies. The information extracted from the study was: study location, number of participants, demographic characteristics of the participants, duration of the study, complications following adolescent rape and rehabilitation methods in them.

Out of 59 related articles, 41 articles were excluded due to lack of expression of complications or rehabilitation in adolescent rape, and finally 18 studies were included in the review study. To collect information from the studies, the articles were carefully reviewed and the results were extracted. The topics covered in the study included sexually transmitted diseases, substance and alcohol abuse, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, psychological disorders, high-risk sexual behavior, treatment and rehabilitation of raped adolescents, and sex education for adolescents.

Rape is more common among teens than any other age group and has many side effects, which can be mental or physical, short-term or long-term. Therefore, it is necessary to consider programs to prevent rape in adolescents and provide appropriate solutions to rehabilitate sexual victims, including reproductive health education in schools, comprehensive community-based awareness, and open discussion about sex and reproductive health issues with Adolescents at family and school level. In addition, to improve adolescent sexual health, sexual abuse prevention plans should be strengthened and awareness of sexual health issues should be considered.