The present study investigated sexual at-risk behaviors of sexually abused adolescent girls. Variables of interest were presence of consensual sexual activity, age at first consensual intercourse, number of sexual partners, condom use, and pregnancies. Participants were 125 sexually abused adolescent girls aged 12 to 17 years. Results showed that severity of sexual abuse (e.g., penetration, multiple perpetrators, physical coercion, multiple incidents of abuse) was related to a greater number of sexual at-risk behaviors. For instance, adolescents with a history of sexual abuse involving penetration were 13 times as likely to have been pregnant. Although family characteristics were significantly associated with being sexually active, their effect proved non-significant in the final hierarchical regression. Regression analyses clearly showed that the likelihood of engaging in sexual at-risk behaviors increased as a function of the number of severity factors.
This study investigated self-harming behaviors in 149 female adolescent victims of sexual abuse, first, by determining the rates of nine types of self-mutilating behavior at intake and nine months later and, second, by investigating comorbidity of clinical correlates associated with these behaviors. The adolescents were divided into three groups according to level of self-mutilating behavior and then compared on symptom self-reports; 62.1% of the adolescents engaged in at least one self-mutilating behavior. A graded relation was observed between level of self-mutilating behavior and rate, and total number of clinical disorders. At nine month follow-up, one in four teenagers still reported a moderate or high level of self-harm. The need for systematic assessment and intervention of self-mutilating behaviors is discussed.
Self-destructive and delinquent behaviors were assessed in three samples of adolescent females. The first sample (N=140) were substantiated victims of sexual abuse recruited from clinical settings. They were contrasted to a second sample (N=430) of secondary school students, and a third sample from the same school setting (N=94), that reported that they had been sexually abused. Few differences were found between the two groups of sexually abused girls, and both groups reported significantly more at-risk behaviors than nonabused girls. Family adversity was a consistent predictor of both self-destructive and delinquent behaviors. However, violence during the abuse, lower quality mother-daughter relationships, and depression were also related to self-destructive behaviors, while family economic problems and self-blame for the abuse were the only correlates of delinquent behavior.
This paper describes a pivotal group session in which there was a major conflict between two members of a group that has met for many years. The group serves chronically ill outpatients suffering primarily from schizophrenia or schizoaffective illness. The aftershocks of the explosive outburst, the leaders' understanding of the contributing factors, countertransference feelings, and coping mechanisms are described. The literature recommends two pathways concerning the expression of anger and aggression in groups of severely disturbed individuals: restriction of intense negative affect or expression of such affect as a helpful component of a therapeutic process. We reflect on this question in sharing detailed clinical material and conclude that coping with aggression in such groups is dependent not only on the group context, but also on the relative fragility, strength, and tolerance of both members and leaders. A crucial step in dealing with eruptive crises consists of reflecting upon the leaders conscious and unconscious intervention motives and affects.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.