REPRINT OF: Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study

Diagnoses of sexual abuse and their common registered comorbidities in the total population of Stockholm

“…For children the difference in odds were the highest for stress disorders followed by alcohol and drugs and anxiety disorders in our study. The high ORs for alcohol and drug abuse are in accordance, but higher than in earlier studies on US adults based on patient samples 12 14 15 28 29. We believe this can be due to the identification of sexual abuse in our study through registered diagnoses, rather than self-report.…”

“…Another most likely explanation for this is that we use a 2-year prevalence of register-based diagnoses in our study, whereas most studies use lifetime prevalence of self-reported sexual abuse. In the ACE-study the prevalence of sexual abuse, (defined as an adult or person at least 5 years older ever touched or fondled the person in a sexual way, or had the person touch their body in a sexual way, or attempted or actually had oral, anal or vaginal intercourse with the person) was 22% for the total study population 15. In the report ‘Violence and health in Sweden—a National Prevalence Study on Exposure to Violence among Women and Men and its Association to Health’ (N=20 000) the prevalence of experiences and memories of forced intercourse (attempts included) was 10% for women and 5% for men.…”

Childhood adversities and post-traumatic stress disorder: evidence for stress sensitisation in the World Mental Health Surveys

“…These included three types of interpersonal loss (parental death, parental divorce and other loss of contact with parents/caregivers), four types of parental maladjustment (psychopathology, substance misuse, criminality and family violence), three types of maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect), respondent serious physical illness and economic adversity. These childhood adversities align with the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, 29 although we did not assess emotional abuse and additionally assessed economic adversity and serious physical illness.…”

Identification of health risk behaviours among adolescent refugees resettling in Western Australia

“…Exposure to traumatic experiences during childhood and adolescence is associated with poor physical and mental health outcomes in later life, including increased participation in adverse health risk activities 6. Refugees have often experienced multiple, repeated and prolonged trauma 7.…”