Psychiatric state of college students with a history of childhood sexual abuse

Abstract

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) seriously influences children's psychological status. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between CSA and the psychiatric disorders. An anonymous and retrospective questionnaire survey was carried out in 1307 college students (aged 18-25 years; 701 females, 606 males) to investigate the participants' CSA experience by means of a complete random sampling method. The Symptom Check-List-90 (SCL-90) test was used to study the victims' psychiatric aspects. 22.11% (155/701) of the female students and 14.69% (89/606) of the male students experienced physical and/or non-physical contact CSA before age 18, with a significant difference between female and male (P<0.05). And 11.43% (80/701) of the female students and 7.26% (44/606) of the male students experienced physical contact CSA (P<0.05). Most abusers were male and young people, and only a few of them used violence. 78.7% of the females experienced non-physical contact CSA from strangers, while 71.3% experienced physical contact CSA from acquaintances. 89.9% of the male victims knew the abusers before. Females were more likely than males to experience physical contact CSA from members of the family circles. The CSA incidence increased with age in females, while 54.7% of the male victims experienced CSA from 12 to 16 years. The students who experienced CSA had higher SCL-90 scores than those who did not in somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. The more serious the CSA experience was, the higher SCL-90 scores of the psychiatric disorders would be. CSA is not uncommon in adolescents. Girls are more likely to experience CSA than boys. About half of the abusers are the victims' close relatives, neighbors and teachers; most abusers were male. Personal experience of CSA may seriously affect the victims' psychological health.