Clinicians' Hypotheses Regarding Clients' Problems: Are They Less Likely to Hypothesize Sexual Abuse in Male Compared to Female Clients?

• NCJ Number: 163223
• Journal: Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 20 Issue: 6 Dated: (June 1996) Pages: 493-501
• Author(s): G Holmes; L Offen
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 9 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Sixty-one British clinical psychologists completed a questionnaire about a detailed case summary of an adult client that incorporated a number of indicators that the client may have been sexually abused.

Abstract

Each participant received a package that included a cover letter, detailed case summaries of two adult clients in the format of referrals from general practitioners, questions about the referrals, and requests for demographic data about the participants. Each case summary incorporated the client's presenting problems, information about early childhood and adolescence, difficulties in current relationships, specific comments made by the client, and some observations from the assessing general practitioner about the client's nonverbal behavior. Referral one was about a client with difficulties common to people with a diagnosis of depression and included in the history the death of the client's opposite sex parent during adolescence. The case summary in referral two included multiple indicators of undisclosed childhood sexual abuse. The gender of the client was manipulated. Significantly more clinicians hypothesized that the female client, compared to the male client, had been sexually abused in childhood. Clinicians who were more recently qualified and clinicians who identified their predominant theoretical orientation as psychodynamic (rather than cognitive-behavioral) were more likely to hypothesize sexual abuse, although these effects were only statistically significant for the female clients. The majority of clinicians who hypothesized sexual abuse in the female client rated the abuse as the most important issue to address in therapy; this was not the case for the male client. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature that suggests the apparently low number of male victims of sexual abuse currently being seen by the helping professions may in part be due to a lack of awareness in clinicians as to the possibility that males, including their male clients, are sexually abused. 39 references