The Lancet, 1988, 331(8590): 841-845

The study discussed in this article investigated the relationship between women's current mental health and their past experiences of sexual and physical abuse, either in childhood or adult life. A questionnaire was sent to 2,000 women randomly selected from the electoral roles of five contiguous New Zealand parliamentary constituencies. Items in the questionnaire included social, educational, and medical status of the women, as well as the 28-item General Health Questionnaire, which assesses psychiatric symptomatology. A further sub-sample of women with high scores of psychiatric symptomatology were randomly selected for interview and inquires were made about the women's experience of sexual and physical abuse. It was found that a history of abuse correlated with raised scores on measures of psychopathology (20% of women who experienced sexual abuse as a child identified as having psychiatric symptoms of a depressive type compared with 6.3% of the non-abused population). In those women who had been physically or sexually abused in adult life, similar increases in psychopathology were also found. The authors conclude that the harmful effects of abuse can continue for many years.