The Ewha Medical Journal
Ewha Womans University School of Medicine
Original Article

Psychiatric Problem in Rape Victims

Jong-Won Kim

Copyright ⓒ 1996. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jul 24, 2015

Abstract

Objectives

The purpose of this study is to investigate the psychiatric problems of rape victims.

Methods

The author observed the psychiatric symptoms of the 10 women patients who visited psychiatric clinics immediately after rape after trauma, and made a related survey of 61 other 61 female outpatients in order to compare psychiatric symptoms of those of them who reported the history of rape trauma and those of the others who did not have such history.

Results

Results are given as follows :

1) The most frequent psychiatric diagnosis of the victims of rather recent day's rape was posttraumatic stress disorder(4/10), followed by depression(2/10) and Schizoaffective disorder(2/10). The most frequent perpetrator was unknown person(8/10).

2) 49.2% of the other 61 patients of psychiatric clinic reported the history of abuse, including 26.2% and 36.1% of them reporting sexual abuse and physical abuse, respectively.

3) Sexual dysfunction was reported in 58.3% of the rape victims, who generally showed a tendency toward the high level of anxiety, hostility and paranoid symptoms.

4) The high scored dissociation was observed in rape victims but not in non-abuse group.

Conclusion

The rape trauma appears to be responsible for some psychiatric symptoms, or at least to be a precipitating factor of psychiatric disorders. The author also confirmed that aftermath of the rape trauma can continue rather perennially, for years after trauma or even for life ling.

Keywords: Rape; Sexual function; Psychiatric symptom