Childhood Abuse Experiences as Factors in Adult Psychiatric Illness: A Preliminary Study

The authors explored childhood and later physical and sexual abuse experiences in 53 female psychiatric inpatients using objective measures.

All subjects were interviewed and administered the life experiences questionnaire and the SCL-90-R and obtained the data on diagnoses, suicidal symtoms and psychotropic medications.

Forty-two(79.2%) of the 53 women reported a history of abuse at some time during their lives. Thirty(56.6%) of them experienced abuse before age 16 and twelve(22.6%) of them experienced abuse at age 16 or later.

The most frequent perpetrators of physical abuse were family members(father before age 16, husband at age 16 or later). The most frequent perpetartors of sexual abuse were not family memebers(strangers before age 16, boy friend at age 16 or later).

The SCL-90-R scores from abused subjects before age 16 within the inpatient psychiatric norms(mean±SD=50±10), but the scores of interpersonal sensitivety, paranoid ideology, psychoticism, global severity index of SCL-90-R subjects.

The abused subjects before age 16 had more diagnoses of depression and schizophrenia and suicidal symptoms and they were given psychotropic medications more often.

Taken together, these findings suggest that childhood abuse experiences were correlated with severity of adult psychiatric symtoms.