There are serious long term effects of incest on a survivor, like the symptoms from the case study that I described above. Signs and symptoms include anxiety, PTSD, compulsion, memory impairment, depression, suicidal feeling, self-mutilation, denial and confusion, low self-esteem, dissociative symptoms, attachment issues, social withdraw, sexual acting out, and borderline and psychotic states. Research has also shown that in some survivors, their human anatomy was altered by long term abuse. In 1986 at the National Institute of Mental Health, Frank Putman and Penelope Trickett created the first longitudinal study on the impact of sexual abuse on female development. This was the first study that actually followed the survivors as they matured
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Over the next twenty years the girls were assessed six times, once a year for the first three years and again at ages eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-five. The subject’s mothers also participated in the early assessment. Remarkably, 96 % of the participants stayed in the study from the beginning (Kolk, 164). The results of the study were instantly recognizable, paralleled to the comparison group of non-abused girls, the sexually abuse girls suffer from a large range of profoundly negative effects, “including cognitive deficits, depression, dissociative symptoms, troubled sexual development, high rates of obesity, and self-mutilation. They dropped out of high school at a higher rate than the control group and had more major illnesses and health-care utilization. They showed abnormalities in their stress hormone responses, and had an earlier onset puberty, and accumulated a host of differently, seemingly unrelated, psychiatric diagnosis” (Kolk, 164). The study also captured the long term effects of incest on the abused girls friendships and relationships showing how their attachment styles are so …show more content…
This conclusions has been drawn from retrospective data indicating that many sexual offenders cite early sexual contact with adults or older children. The book Sexualized children: Assessment and treatment of sexualized children and children who molest quotes “A reasonable overall estimate of the percentage of adjudicated sex offenders of children and adolescent who report having experienced sexual contact with an adult during their childhood or adolescence is approximately 30%” (Gil, 63). This explains the reason why many parents and relatives sexually abuse their family members. They themselves may have been victimized as a child. One theory of why this generational pattern occurs comes from the learning theory. Children learn from observing significant adults in their life. Children may be taught through classical conditioning in which desired behaviors are reinforced and undesirable behaviors are punished. As adults, they are reliving the same pain, hurt, guilt and shame they have known their whole
Over the next twenty years the girls were assessed six times, once a year for the first three years and again at ages eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-five. The subject’s mothers also participated in the early assessment. Remarkably, 96 % of the participants stayed in the study from the beginning (Kolk, 164). The results of the study were instantly recognizable, paralleled to the comparison group of non-abused girls, the sexually abuse girls suffer from a large range of profoundly negative effects, “including cognitive deficits, depression, dissociative symptoms, troubled sexual development, high rates of obesity, and self-mutilation. They dropped out of high school at a higher rate than the control group and had more major illnesses and health-care utilization. They showed abnormalities in their stress hormone responses, and had an earlier onset puberty, and accumulated a host of differently, seemingly unrelated, psychiatric diagnosis” (Kolk, 164). The study also captured the long term effects of incest on the abused girls friendships and relationships showing how their attachment styles are so …show more content…
This conclusions has been drawn from retrospective data indicating that many sexual offenders cite early sexual contact with adults or older children. The book Sexualized children: Assessment and treatment of sexualized children and children who molest quotes “A reasonable overall estimate of the percentage of adjudicated sex offenders of children and adolescent who report having experienced sexual contact with an adult during their childhood or adolescence is approximately 30%” (Gil, 63). This explains the reason why many parents and relatives sexually abuse their family members. They themselves may have been victimized as a child. One theory of why this generational pattern occurs comes from the learning theory. Children learn from observing significant adults in their life. Children may be taught through classical conditioning in which desired behaviors are reinforced and undesirable behaviors are punished. As adults, they are reliving the same pain, hurt, guilt and shame they have known their whole