Clinical Characteristics of Female Panic Disorder with Early Sexual Abuse History

Abstract

Objective: Research has accumulated over the past several years demonstrating a relationship between childhood trauma such as sexual abuse and female panic disorder (PD). Most of studies have generally suffered from methodological limitations, including small sample size and not controlling for psychiatric comorbidity and suicidality which can influence the clinical characteristics. This study aimed to investigate differences of demographic and clinical characteristics between female PD patients with (PD+S) and without early sexual abuse history (PD-S). Design and Method: We examined data from 101 patients diagnosed with PD. We divided the patients with PD into PD-S (69 patients) and PD+S (32 patients) to compare demographic (age, marriage, education, suicidality history, comorbidity) and clinical characteristics [coping strategies, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Panic disorder severity (PDSS), Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), Albany Panic and Phobia Questionnaire (APPQ) - agoraphobia subscale, NEO-neuroticism (NEO-N)]. IBM SPSS version 21.0 was used for statistical analysis. Results: There were no differences between PD+S group and PD–S group with respect to demographics and coping strategies, BAI, BDI, PDSS and ASI. Compared to the PD-S, PD+S group showed higher levels of neuroticism (p=0.00) and agoraphobia (p=0.04). Conclusions: The current study suggests that female PD+S patients can be associated with neuroticism and agoraphobia. Therefore it may be needed to pay attention to the sexual abuse history in female patients with PD.