Adolescent victims of sexual abuse evaluation with repertory grid technique

This study aimed to investigate how sexual abuse affects self perceptions and perceptions of significant other people (involving mother, father, siblings and others in their social environment.) in the adolescents who have experienced sexual abuse.30 girl adolescents between the ages of 14-16 years who admitted due to sexual abuse to Child and Adolescents Pschiatry Department of Akdeniz University Hospital were recruited as the study group. Age, sex, educational and socioeconomic status matched 25 girl adolescents without prior admission to any child pschiatry unit and sexual abuse history enrolled to the study as control group.Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) was used to assess self and other perceptions and cognitive conflicts. All children were interviewed using K-SADS-PL (Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children) for whole present psychopatology and for assessing self esteem Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale was used.In the RGT found that girl sexual abuse victims perceived themselves as more different from mother, sibling and intimate girl-friend and themselves as more similar to friends who ascribed negative properties, than non-abused group. It also has been seen to be affected adversly self-esteem by sexual abuse. Sexually abused girls had signicantly higher self/ideal self distances than non-abused group. This suggests a lower self-esteem for the victims sexual abuse, which corresponds with their signicantly lower mean score on the Self-esteem Scale.Examination revealed that 26 (86,7%) of sexual abuse cases were have at least one psychiatric disorder. Posttraumatic stress disorder, conversion disorder and depression were diagnosed mostly.In summary, sexual abuse victims have the excessive cognitive complexity, that causes inconsistent and scattered their interpretations and point of view about themselves and world. Also results showed signicant differences between sexual abuse victim girls and non-abused girls, with sexual abuse victims having higher levels of psychopathology, lower self-esteem (higher self/ideal self discrepancy) and perceived themselves as different (and negative) from significant others.These findings suggest that sexual abuse is a significant life stressor for sexually abused adolescents and it may prove that it is beneficial to follow up psychiatric symptoms of adolescents who experienced sexual abuse.