NCJ Number
145813
Journal
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Volume: 32 Issue: 5 Dated: (September 1993) Pages: 954-961
Date Published
1993
Length
8 pages
Annotation
A group of sexually abused adolescent psychiatric inpatients was compared with a control group of inpatient counterparts on measures of social competence, self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, and perceptions of family characteristics and functioning in order to identify factors contributing to the development of psychopathology and to devise appropriate therapies.
Abstract
The sample consisted of 423 youth admitted to an adolescent psychiatric unit between August 1988 and May 1991. From the sample of 423, 87 adolescents who had been sexually abused were successfully matched on an individual basis with 87 adolescents who had no known history of sexual abuse. Key matching variables were age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, and psychiatric diagnosis. The final sample of 174 included 130 females, 65 of whom had been sexually abused, and 44 male subjects, 22 of whom had a history of sexual abuse. Findings revealed that sexually abused and control group inpatient adolescents were similar on standardized measures of psychological distress and family functioning. Statistically significant differences, however, were found on substance abuse measures. The strong similarities between groups on measures of self-esteem, depression, social competence, and family structure were probably due to the homogeneous nature of adolescent psychiatric inpatients. Clinical implications of the study results are discussed, as well as the relationship between sexual abuse and substance abuse. 47 references and 4 tables