CSA Mental Health

CSA has been linked to mental health issues in the victim’s adult lives such as depression, PTSD, and anxiety to mention a few (Johnson, Pike and Chard, 2001). It was found that women who had a history of CSA are more likely to experience these outcomes than those women who were not abused (Romans, Martin, and Mullen, 1997). In a study conducted by Catan and Sossalla (2015), a sample of 56 volunteers who were at a welfare center who attended people with intellectual disabilities was gathered. These participants were interviewed about the current or past psychiatric or psychological treatments. DSM-IV diagnosis and severity of PTSD was used for the diagnosis of PTSD. The results concluded that 25 % of their participants were diagnosed with PTSD and 27% of them had a high score on the depression scale stating that the victims of CSA are among the people who have intellectual disabilities. …show more content…
Although it has been found that victims of CSA are at an increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders (Linskey & Fergusson, 1997), the research needs to take into account issues they had before their sexual abuse occurred. A similar review examined links between CSA and mental health issues in adulthood by investigating data from a cohort of 1,000 New Zealand adults up to the age of 25 and concluded that exposure to CSA was in fact associated with an increased risk of mental disorders in their adult lives which included depression and anxiety disorder (Fergusson, Boden, & Horwood, 2008). This literature supports the idea that some CSA victims do in fact have mental health issues as a consequence of their