Psychotic Experiences In People Who Have Been Sexually Assaulted
Abstract
The authors of the article delve into a field of study where little research has been conducted. They sought to establish the relationship between psychosis and people who have been assaulted previously. It is true that when we are victimized at some point in our lives, the victimization will stick to our cognitive and that our behaviors may be modified by the traumatic experiences.
Summary
The researchers, Lobban, F. and Knight, A. et al (2008), conducted an exploratory study on a sample of 40 survivors of sexual assault. The sample was obtained from police quarters, its representativeness was ensured by including all ages into the sample. To ensure accuracy of the results, the sexually assaulted group was investigated side by side with a control group of individuals who had not been victims of sexual assault; the control group was obtained by use of self report questionnaires.
Of the 26 victims of sexual assault who were interviewed, 46% indicated predisposition to auditory hallucinations while 46% reported to have experienced visual hallucinations. The group reported to have heard voices around them when nobody was actually there, they reported to have seen faces of people and shadows pass by them when they were alone and nobody around them. They portrayed symptoms of post-trauma beliefs which included negative cognition about self and negative cognition about the world. They lacked a positive view of the world and were with a low self esteem, they hated themselves and the world. 7% of the 26 participants who had been sexually assaulted reported to have experienced virtual voices as children, 23% as adolescents and 38% as adults. This shows that psychotic condition is associated with sexual assault in all age groups.
The psychotic phenomenon was found on the sexually assaulted group, the control group on the other hand did not portray the symptoms. They concluded that psychotic syndrome is associated with traumatic instances. The researchers established that the sexually assaulted group had the psychological factors that contribute to psychotic experience which include dissociation factors and cognitive factors. The psychotic experiences encompassed hallucinations and delusions, the sexually assaulted group reported that they are always to suspicious of people around them and that they are always very afraid when alone. They reported that they do not want ever to recount their experiences again.
Opinion
It is vivid from the article and personal experience that whenever we become victims of an assault like sexual assault we are bound to have post trauma symptoms. It is true that we are predisposed to disassociate ourselves from the traumatic experiences and this is how the post trauma symptoms crops up, Hardy et al. (2005). Psychotic symptoms are pronounced in individuals who have experienced forms of assault before: I have a friend who was assaulted by gangsters last year, today my friend is so afraid of walking in dark, sometimes when we are walking together he tells me that he has seen images of people tracking us while in reality there is no one, this is because of the psychotic symptoms he inherited from the experience with the burglars. Combining my personal experience with my friend and the empirical evidence from the article, it is thus clear that once we pass through forms of assault in our lifetime we are bound to develop psychotic symptoms, Haddock et al. (1994).
References
Lobban, F. & Knight, A. et al. (2008). Psychotic experiences in people who have been sexually assaulted. Social psychology epidemiol, (43): 602-611
Hardy, A. et al. (2005). Trauma and hallucinatory experience in psychosis. J Nerv Ment dis. 193(8): 501-507
Haddock, G. et al. (1994). Childhood abuse in first-episode psychosis. BR J psychiatry, 164(6): 831-834
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