PSYCHIATRIC DISTRESS AND OTHER CORRELATES ASSOCIATED WITH BEING A VICTIM OF PHYSICAL ABUSE IN FEMALE INMATES

Abstract

Having a history of physical abuse is found in a large proportion of women in jails. Nearly 60% of female inmates recruited into Project Success, a NIAAA‐funded randomized controlled trial which tested the efficacy of an intervention to reduce the risk of alcohol‐exposed pregnancy, reported having been a victim of physical abuse in the year before coming to jail. The purpose of this study was to examine current psychiatric distress and to identify demographic characteristics and various life situations (i.e., homelessness, standard of living) associated with having been a victim of abuse in these female inmates. Secondary data analyses were conducted on baseline data from women recruited into Project Success two weeks prior to release from urban jails. Women reporting at least one occurrence of physical abuse in the year before coming to jail (n=122) were compared to women reporting no occurrence (n=83). Profile Analysis was used to examine the differences in current psychiatric distress, as measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory, between the women reporting abuse and those reporting no abuse. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to explore variables that were correlated with membership in the group of women with a recent history of abuse. For the BSI profiles, significant differences were found on the overall mean level of distress (p=.002) between the abused and not abused groups. The women with a recent history of abuse showed significantly more distress with higher mean scores on the obsessive‐compulsive (p= .030), interpersonal sensitivity (p= .026), depression (p=.012), hostility (p= .025), paranoid ideation (p= .009) and psychoticism (p= .007) subscales. In addition, women who reported homelessness in the year before coming to jail had almost five times greater likelihood of having a history of abuse (O.R. 4.81, 95% C.I. 1.66, 13.94).The odds of being in the abuse category were nearly two to one for women who had a partner who drinks excessively (O.R. 2.00, 95% C.I., 1.11, 3.60). Women who reported a poor or near poor standard of living were over two times as likely (O.R., 2.26, 95% C.I., 1.08, 4.69) and inmates with a history of sex abuse were almost four times as likely to have been physically abused (O.R. 3.78, 95% C.I., 1.22, 11.68). These findings suggest that large numbers of female inmates could benefit from increased mental health services in jail and interventions aimed at supporting successful reintegration into the community by addressing the myriad of stressful life situations that place these women at risk.