title: Child Abuse in Iran: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of the present study was to estimate the pooled prevalence of different types of child abuse in Iran.
  
  
  METHODS
  We systematically searched four English databases (PubMed, Sciencedirect, PsychINFO and Scopus), and three Farsi databases (Magiran, IranMedex and SID) to find out relevant articles that have reported the prevalence of child abuse in Iran. Studies conducted on special samples, special setting or on adult population for history of child abuse were excluded from our study. The total number of obtained articles from English databases was 83. After removing the duplicated articles, 77 manuscripts remained. Next, we screened the articles based on their title and abstract and only 13 articles remained. After screening based on the full text only 5 studies were left. Since Farsi databases did not give us the option to get all the search results together, we read the search results based on their titles and selected the relevant articles. Twenty-four studies were selected based on their title. After screening based on the full text, 8 studies remained. The total number of the studies from both English and Farsi databases that we entered in our review was 13.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The prevalence of physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect in both genders differed from 9.7% to 67.5 %, 17.9% to 91.1% and 23.6% to 80.18%, respectively. The pooled estimate of the prevalence of child physical abuse in both genders was 43.591% (CI -216.146, 303.328%), and the pooled estimate of the prevalence of child emotional abuse was 64.533% (CI -195.205, 324.270). In regards to child neglect, the pooled estimate of the prevalence was 40.945% (CI -274.989, 356.879). The heterogeneity of the studies was not statically significant (I(2) = 0.0%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Child abuse has several negative effects on the health of children and adults. It seems that child abuse in Iran is in a critical condition, so the policy makers should act upon solving this problem and design special programs and develop effective policies to prevent child abuse in Iran.
authors.affiliation: Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Psychiatry & Psychology Research Center, Tehran Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad Reza
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Mohammadi
authors.affiliation: Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Psychiatry & Psychology Research Center, Tehran Iran.
authors.forename: Hadi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zarafshan
authors.affiliation: Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Psychiatry & Psychology Research Center, Tehran Iran.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khaleghi
keywords: Child abuse; Prevalence; emotional abuse; neglect and Iran; physical abuse