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Attitudes of general psychiatrists to child sexual abuse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Bisa Haeger
Affiliation:
Royal Free Hospital, London NE3
Joy Dalton
Affiliation:
Whittington and Friern Hospital, London N19
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The incidence of child sexual abuse varies according to definitions and methods used. The MORI Poll 1984 found it to be 12% for girls and 8% for boys and to occur across all the social classes using this definition: “A child (anyone under 16 years) is sexually abused when another person, who is sexually mature, involves the child in any activity which the other person expects to lead to their own sexual arousal. This might involve intercourse, touching, exposure of the sexual organs, showing pornographic material or talking about sexual things in an erotic way”. The majority of studies have shown that these experiences can have adverse psychological effects, but the effect on the clinical practice of general psychiatrists seems to be too small if one considers the estimated 4.5 million adults in Great Britain who have been sexually abused as children. We thought that this could be related to attitudes rather than knowledge of the subject.

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Articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1988

References

1 Baker, A. W. & Duncan, S. P. (1984) Child sexual abuse – a study of prevalence in Great Britain. Channel 4/MORI Poll for Gambles Milne Ltd 1984.Google Scholar
2 Editorial (1986) Childhood depression and sexual abuse. Lancet, I, 196.Google Scholar
3 Burgess, A. W. & Holmstrom, L. L. (1975) Sexual assault of children and adolescents: Pressure, sex and secrecy. Nursing Clinics of North America,September 1975, 5563.Google Scholar
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