Social Support and Children's and Adolescents' Adaptation to Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Limited research exists examining factors mitigating the negative effects of sexual abuse. This report, based on a sample of 154 participants, analyzes how social support helps explain variations in child and adolescent psychological distress at the time of sexual abuse discovery. Adolescents, compared to children, are less likely to feel supported by parents and other adult relatives, but are more likely to view friends as support resources. As expected, support from a parent is related to less psychological distress, while the use of primarily friends for support is related to increased adjustment difficulties. The findings indicate that developmental period and source of support are important to consider in understanding how support functions as a protective factor.

Relationship of personal, familial, and abuse-specific factors with outcome following childhood sexual abuse

“…Adolescents are already experiencing many changes and trying to exert their independence which can have an impact on their self-esteem and on internalizing symptoms. Experiencing sexual abuse during this time can cause added stress and make the adolescent more vulnerable to internalizing symptoms (Feiring et al, 1998a(Feiring et al, , 1998b. Similar results were found by Gries et al (2000) when examining children attending psychotherapy who were removed from the home due to abuse and neglect and reported a history of CSA.…”

“…Further, children rather than adolescents were more likely to report high levels of parental support following disclosure and to be more satisfied with the support they received. Teens were more likely to report support from peers, but this support, unlike parental support, was related to greater psychological distress (Feiring et al, 1998b).…”

“…This attachment was a greater predictor of outcome than parental support. Feiring et al (1998b) found that parental support was the only variable that explained depressive symptoms in victims, with the greater perceived parental support, the fewer depressive symptoms reported. Further, children rather than adolescents were more likely to report high levels of parental support following disclosure and to be more satisfied with the support they received.…”

“…Further, although age was associated with these symptoms (depressive symptoms and sexual anxiety), gender and abuse characteristics (i.e., duration of abuse, victim-perpetrator relationship) were not. These differences are at least partly due to developmental differences between children and adolescents (Feiring et al, 1998a(Feiring et al, , 1998b. Adolescents are already experiencing many changes and trying to exert their independence which can have an impact on their self-esteem and on internalizing symptoms.…”

“…Some important familial factors that have been shown to be related to outcome include parental history of CSA, parental responses to disclosure and support of the victim, parental stress and coping, socioeconomic status, and family discord (e.g., Baker, 2001; Deblinger et al, 1997; Elliott & Carnes, 2001;Feiring et al, 1998b;Jankowski, Leitenberg, Henning, & Coffey, 2002).…”