Level of Dissociation and Histories of Reported Abuse among Women Psychiatric Outpatients

The purpose of this study is to investigate the dissociative levels and histories of reported abuse among women psychiatric outpatients.

The author observed the dissociative levels and histories of reported abuse of the 66 women outpatients who visited psychiatric clinics, and compare dissociative symptoms of women who reported the history of physical and sexual abuse and symptoms of the others who did not have such history.

Results are as follows :

1) 54.5% of the other 66 outpatients of psychiatric clinic reported the history of abuse, including 13.6%, 24.2% and 16.7% of them reporting sexual abuse, physical abuse and physical and sexual abuse respectively.

2) Scores on the DES of abuse group was 18.6±16.3 which was significantly higher than DES of the non-abuse group(7.09±7.10).

3) Scores on the DES was highest in sexual abuse group, followed by physical abuse group and then physical and sexual abuse group. The percentile of score on the DES above 25 which was considered the score of dissociative disorder 44.4% of sexual abuse group, 18.8% of physical abuse group, 18.2% of physical and sexual abuse group, and 3.3% of non-abuse group.

4) Scores on the DES was variable according to the age of first abuse. It was highest in 7-11 years old group, followed by 12-16years old group, and then above 16years old group.

Sexual and physical abuse, especially sexual abuse, appears to be responsible for dissociation, or at least to ve a precipitating factor of dissociative experience.