Relative effects of sexual assault and other traumatic life events on self-harm

Abstract

IntroductionSexual assault is a common traumatic stressor that is associated with a number of mental health difficulties among men and women who experience it. Perhaps the most severe of these difficulties are self-harm, a term which encompasses suicidal impulses and behaviors and non-suicidal self-injury. Self-harm is common among those with a history of traumatic experiences, perhaps because it represents a way to escape memories of and emotions related to these experiences. This may particularly be the case for the trauma of sexual assault, on which there is a growing body of research. Although this research suggests a strong association between sexual assault and self-harm, it is less clear whether sexual assault is more strongly associated with self-harm than are other traumatic experiences. Objective/MethodIn this study, we examined the relative effects of sexual assault since the age of fourteen and other traumatic experiences on self-harm in a sample of men and women recruited on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 390) using a Bayesian approach to multiple regression. ResultsResults suggest that sexual assault has a large positive effect on self-harm over and above other traumatic experiences. ConclusionThese results highlight the especially pernicious influence of sexual assault and suggest the need to assess self-harm among those with a sexual assault history.