NCJ Number
226678
Journal
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Dated: January-February 2009 Pages: 93-102
Date Published
February 2009
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study examined pathological association among abused children.
Abstract
Results indicated that 14.2 percent of sexually abused children evidenced pathological dissociation according to parent reports when a score of 2 was used as the threshold on the pathological dissociation factor. This higher rate of pathological dissociation is to be expected because the participants are drawn from a clinical population rather than a general population. The Childhood Dissociative Checklist (CDC) can be reduced into three components: pathological dissociation, variability, and externalizing. One of the components, pathological dissociation, appears to assess more serious symptoms of dissociation. Unfortunately, there is no measure that serves as a standard for the systematic diagnosis of dissociation in young children. Differences in weighted pathological dissociation scores were examined between those in the sample who experienced sexual abuse and those who experienced physical abuse; the children who experienced sexual abuse were rated by their parents as evidencing more pathological dissociation than the physically abused children. Also found was that pathological dissociation was predicted by being male and that being female was related to dissociation in general. Data were collected from parents of 232 physically and sexually abused children between the ages of 6 and 13, recruited from a children’s hospital serving a largely rural State. Tables and references