Symptoms of Female Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1994

Abstract

Women who suffered sexual abuse as children often experience a variety of physical and psychosocial symptoms as adults. Identifying this pattern of symptoms might assist health professionals in recognizing and treating non reporting survivors of child sexual abuse. In this study, the Adult Survivors of Incest (ASI) Questionnaire (Brown & Garrison, 1990) was used to determine the symptoms and contributing factors for 22 adult survivors of child sexual abuse. Six physical symptoms were experienced by 50% of the subjects, and over 75% of the subjects experienced II psychosocial symptoms. The number of physical symptoms correlated significantly with other victimizations (r = 59) and number of psychosocial symptoms (r = 56). The findings suggest that the ASI Questionnaire was effective in identifying patterns of symptoms and contributing factors of adult survivors of child abuse. Additional study is needed to determine the usefulness of this questionnaire in identifying non reporting survivors in clinical situations.

Publication Title

Issues in Mental Health Nursing

Volume

15

Issue

5

First Page

519

Last Page

532

DOI of Published Version

10.3109/01612849409006926

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

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