Sexual abuse histories and sequelae in female psychiatric emergency room patients

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The charts of 100 nonpsychotic female patients in a psychiatric emergency room were reviewed to locate reference to history of sexual molestation: 50 charts were selected at random from emergency room files, and 50 charts had been written by clinicians asked to query abuse history. A substantially higher rate of sexual abuse was found for patients who had been directly asked about sexual molestation (70%) than for the random sample (6%). Further analysis linked molestation history to suicidality, substance abuse, sexual difficulties, multiple psychiatric diagnoses, and axis II traits or disorders.sbd.especially borderline personality. Sever abuse and multiple abusers best predicted psychiatric sequelae.