Past trauma and present functioning of patients attending a women's psychiatric clinic.

ABSTRACT

A women's psychiatric clinic, incorporated within a university teaching general hospital and staffed entirely by women, was opened in March of 1980. The authors studied a sample of 100 women who came to the clinic and characterized them by demographic variables, psychiatric diagnoses, health problems, chronic illness, death in the family, and traumatic incidents. Death in the family before she was 18 was found to predict a woman's subsequent request for or completion of sterilization. Physical or sexual abuse was significantly related to abortion, and abortion and trauma were significantly correlated.

ABSTRACT

PIP Data were collected from the intake forms completed by 100 patients of a women's psychiatric clinic in order to characterize them by demographic variables, psychiatric diagnoses, health problems, chronic illness, death in the family, and traumatic incidents. Having postulated that the sample could be divided into specific groups according to the history of trauma, history of deaths in the family, and chronic illness in the patient and her family, an attempt was made to discover any relationship between such histories and the patient's current health problems. The existence of specific and different health issues and implications for the trauma group, the death group, and the chronic illness group was postulated. The only demographic characteristic that was significantly correlated with other variables was education. Women having no more than high school education were more likely to have experienced physical or sexual abuse than were those having postsecondary education. Members of the former group also were significantly more likely to have had an abortion. There was no statistically significant relationship between education level and other health or trauma variables. 49% of the sample had experienced the death of a family member. Of these, 25% had experienced at least 1 of these deaths before age 18. There was a small but significant correlation between death in the family and a personal history of chronic illness and 3 or more gynecological problems. There was a small statistical correlation between death in the family and a diagnosis of neurotic or adjustment disorder and finding of a high stress level. There was no statistical correlation between death in the family and abortion, there was a highly significant correlation between death in the family and request for or completion of sterilization. When the factor of physical and/or sexual abuse was examined separately, there was a significant correlation with abortion and a somewhat weaker correlation with sterilization. Abortion correlated very significant with 3 or more trauma factors; sterilization correlated also but at a less significant level than abortion.