Traumatic sexual incidents may cause serious mental health problems inside the years after the events, investigation at the University of Ulster has shown.Using a distinctive investigative approach, researchers on the University's Psychology Research Institute examined the mental health of women who had visited rape crisis centres and it showed that sexual trauma plays a role in the development of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
The propensity for trauma victims to move away from the region in which the traumatic incident took location thus disrupting their social support networks might also expose them to further mental health risks.
Outcomes with the analysis have recently been published within the prestigious journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.
The collaborative analyze saw the University of Ulster link up while using University of Southern Denmark to examine the information gathered from the Danish Civil Registration System (CRS), which is really a database of official details held on Danish citizens since 1968.
Professor Mark Shevlin, from Ulster's School of Psychology, said that using the CRS was a distinctive sort of investigation by no means undertaken in this area just before.
Professor Shevlin said: "Trauma research is fraught with methodological difficulties. The use of the CRS has allowed us to conduct case-control prospective studies in a very efficient way. Our most recent study identified an association between rape and subsequent diagnosis of a psychotic disorder over a 10-year period. This study would have been virtually impossible without the use of CRS data."
Professor Shevlin has been working alongside Professor Ask Elklit in the University of Southern Denmark, and he mentioned that the investigation has essential implications on treatment and developing therapies for those with schizophrenia.
Professor Elklit said: "The CRS provides researchers with information on a large number of variables related to physical and psychological health, education, employment, income, and housing. Collaborating with Ulster has provided us with the skills and expertise to link separate databases and conduct statistical analyses to help answer important psychological questions.
"For example, this has allowed us to identify social factors that increase the risk of rape or sexual victimization, and estimate the costs in terms of physical and psychological problems."
Professors Elklit and Shevlin are planning to continue and extend their CRS research. They have commenced a project that aims to model multiple traumatic childhood experiences and subsequent psychological and behavioural problems.
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