The Experience of Hospitalization and Restraint of Women who have a History of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Within psychiatric settings, many female clients report experiences of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). In this paper we explore the experience of 10 women who were hospitalized in psychiatric settings, restrained, and given forced medication (FM). All the women have histories that included CSA. Some authors have suggested that the experience of psychiatric hospitalization may represent an event that reenacts the experience of trauma. The results suggest that from the perspective of these women, the experience of restraint engendered traumatic emotional reactions such as fear, anxiety, and rage, and in no way was viewed as therapeutic even years later. Women felt powerless and unheard. The women wanted nurses who were empathic and responsive to their human needs as clients, but they felt nurses did not want to hear about the abuse or their internal distress. We hope that the perspective of these women will help in the consideration of alternatives and modifications to the use of restraint in psychiatric settings.

Methodological and ethical challenges in studying patients’ perceptions of coercion: a systematic mixed studies review

“…Out of the 32 studies, 14 were qualitative [7,8,14,12,35-44] and 18 were quantitative [13,10,15,45-59]. Two of the studies were mixed methods studies [42,51].…”

“…Six of the qualitative studies mentioned theoretical bases; three of them were based on grounded theory [40,14,43], two on hermeneutic theory [7,41] and one on ethnographic theory [8]. A participatory approach was used in one study, meaning that consumer researchers were used as data collectors [42].…”

“…The recruitment process was explained in nine of the qualitative studies [35-37,8,14,12,41,43,44], and in ten of the quantitative studies [46,10,48-50,13,54-56,15]. In qualitative study recruitment was accomplished by staff (n = 1) and by researcher (n =4) or voluntary participation (n = 4) inviting participants by mail, information sessions or aided by the outpatient staff.…”

“…The time elapsing between the coercion episode and data collection was mentioned (n = 14) and this varied from during the restraint episode [37] to one month after the experience, mean approximately seven days, in eight qualitative studies [36,8,38,40,14,12,44]. The time elapsing between the seclusion experience and data collection was not specified in three qualitative studies [35,7,39].…”

“…Reasons for the time elapsing were mentioned in one study [39]. In addition, Gallop et al [8] collected data approximately five years after the restraint experience.…”