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Sexual and physical child abuse and the developtnent of dissociative personality traits. Canadian and British evidence from adolescent child welfare and child care populations
Author(s) -
Bagley Christopher,
Rodberg Gloria,
Wellings David,
Young Loretta
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
child abuse review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-0852
pISSN - 0952-9136
DOI - 10.1002/car.2380040207
Subject(s) - personality , psychology , dissociative experiences scale , dissociative disorders , dissociative , sexual abuse , clinical psychology , psychiatry , child abuse , personality disorders , poison control , suicide prevention , medicine , social psychology , medical emergency , schizotypy
Abstract An attempt was made to construct a measure of dissociative personality traits from file review of 61 Canadian adolescents with a known history of sexual abuse before the age of six. The study was then extended to 55 British adolescents in residential care and therapy centres. Between 18 and 29% of adolescents displayed several features of dissociative personality, implying the possibility of multiple personality disorder. Those with two or more indicators of dissociative personality style tended to have more problematic behavioural histories, including a particularly high prevalence of deliberate self‐harm. In the UK group the Dissociative Experiences Scale (Bernstein and Putnam, 1986) completed by 55 adolescents correlated 0.67 with the dissociative personality trait index constructed from case file review. Implications for treatment of abused children are discussed.