It is known, that child sexual abuse may result in severe psychological and even psychiatric disorders, heavily affecting the life of the victim. However child sexual abuse is one of the causing factors, which, though resulting in serious and in some cases very dramatic results, are very uneasy for research, because in the majority of cases victims tend to avoid mentioning such cases. Besides, in some cases it may be made even more difficult by dissociative disorders (Draijer, 1999). This is why I decided to speak of dissociative disorders caused by child sexual abuse in this paper.
Among possible consequences of chronical child abuse one should pay particular attention to such a disorder as loss of memories, related to the actual episodes of abuse (Draijer, 1999). This order is believed to be provoked by the compensatory mechanisms of our brain. It is a psychological attempt to avoid further reflections on a painful subject.
There has been a positive correlation established between the intensiveness of abuse and the length of the period, within which it was taking place, and the severeness of the symptoms. Which makes it even more complex for the scholars and other researchers to study the effects of sexual abuse on development of further psychological disorders (Hornor, 2010).
In addition todeveloping amnesia, the victims of child sexual abuse are also known to often develop dissociative identity disorders (Hornor, 2010).
Many scholars have been emphasizing, however, that other factors, which usually accompany child sexual abuse in problem families, should be taken into consideration. Such factors cause lack of parental care and control, physical and moral abuse, etc. All these factors may also have significant influence on developing the disorders, mentioned above.
- Draijer N, Langeland W (March 1999). “Childhood trauma and perceived parental dysfunction in the etiology of dissociative symptoms in psychiatric inpatients”. The American Journal of Psychiatry 156 (3): 379–85.
- Hornor, G. (2010). “Child sexual abuse: Consequences and implications”. Journal of Pediatric Health Care 24 (6): 358–364.
