Health Concerns of University Women with a History of Child Physical and Sexual Maltreatment

Posttraumatic stress symptoms as a mediator between sexual assault and adverse health outcomes in undergraduate women

“…Symptoms are rated on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 5 (occurs daily). The HSC previously demonstrated good internal consistency reliability (α = .89; Runtz, 2002b). Similar reliability (α = .88) was found in the current sample.…”

“…Similar reliability (α = .88) was found in the current sample. Validity has been demonstrated through significant correlations with several health-related variables (e.g., medication use; social, academic, and occupational functioning; Runtz, 2002b).…”

“…On the Health Symptom Checklist (HSC; Runtz, 2002b), participants rated the frequency of 54 physical health symptoms (e.g., nausea, backaches) over the past 6 months. Symptoms are rated on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 5 (occurs daily).…”

“…Because there are established links between childhood maltreatment and adult sexual assault (Van Bruggen, Runtz, & Kadlec, 2006), as well as child maltreatment and adverse health outcomes (Runtz, 2002b), we controlled for childhood maltreatment in the present study. Finally, PTSS severity is expected to mediate the relationship between sexual assault severity and physical health.…”

Betrayal Trauma: Relationship to Physical Health, Psychological Distress, and a Written Disclosure Intervention

“…Runtz (2002) found that university women with a history of childhood physical abuse were more likely to experience a variety of health symptoms, and Romans and colleagues (2002) found that women with childhood and/ or adult abuse histories were more likely to experience chronic fatigue, bladder problems, pelvic pain, headache, chronic pain, asthma, diabetes, and heart problems. In two studies of men and women from primary practice samples, researchers found that those who had been victims of abuse had had more surgeries and engaged in more behaviors that were harmful to health (Kendall-Tackett, Marshall, & Ness, 2000), were more likely to be obese, to have chronic headaches, asthma, and gastrointestinal symptoms, and were more likely to have high numbers of doctor office visits each year (Felitti, 1991).…”