Child sexual abuse is an important societal problem, yet the research literature in this area is highly unsystematic. The purpose of this study is to assess the short- and long-term psychological symptoms exhibited by sexually abused children. Specifically, this investigation will examine the incidence, severity, and duration of anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems and level of self-concept of children who have been sexually abused. Extensive historical information about past psychopathology will also be collected that will constitute a pre-abuse baseline. Methodological advances in the proposed study, compared with earlier research, are the inclusion of systematic control groups, compared with earlier research, are the inclusion of systematic control groups, standardized assessment measures, and follow-up assessments. Sixty sexually abused girls, ages 6-12, will be recruited from three agencies that provide services to sexual assult victims. The control grups will be 60 normal controls recruited from two local schools, and 60 psychopathological controls recruited from the outpatient child and adolescent psychiatric program of WPIC. During the initial assessment, the sexually abused subjects will be interviewed regarding the nature of the sexual abuse they experienced. All subjects (experimental and controls) will complete the Children's Depression Inventory, The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale, and a semi-structured interview. Parents will complete a Developmental, Psychiatric, and Medical History, a Child's Current Functioning Interview, and the Child Behavior Checklist. Follow-up assessments will be at one, six, and twelve months. Data analysis will be geared toward comparing the sexually abused and control groups across all of the assessments on each dependent variable. The data collected will hopefully lead to a more refined assessment study and possibly to a treatment study for sexually abused children who are found to be seriously traumatized.
| Mannarino, A P; Cohen, J A; Berman, S R (1994) The relationship between preabuse factors and psychological symptomatology in sexually abused girls. Child Abuse Negl 18:63-71 |
