Disclosure of Abuse among Female Patients within General Psychiatric Care

BACKGROUND:

Experiences of abuse are common among women in general psychiatric care. Even so, there are to our knowledge no previous national or international studies exploring disclosure in a general psychiatric setting of female patient's experiences of abuse to staff or to formal and informal networks. This study aimed to explore women's disclosure of experiencing physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse during their most recent contact with staff at a general psychiatric clinic. The study also aimed to determine whether the women have previously disclosed abuse to anyone.

METHODS:

A consecutive sampling of eligible female patients at a general psychiatric clinic in an urban area of southern Sweden answered the NorVold Abuse Questionnaire, NorAQ, a self-administrated questionnaire. NorAQ has previously been used and further developed to compare the prevalence of abuse in women present in gynecological outpatient settings in the five Nordic countries. Seventy-seven women with experiences of abuse participated in the research. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data.

RESULTS:

Most respondents did not disclose their experiences of abuse to staff at the general psychiatric clinic. Women with experiences of physical abuse (n = 40), emotional abuse (n = 37) and sexual abuse (n = 37) chose not to disclose their experiences. Respondents disclosed abuse more often to others than to staff.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our findings indicated the importance of including routine questions concerning abuse experiences as a natural part of female patients' medical history.

Disclosure of abuse among female patients in general psychiatric care (n=77)

Disclosure of abuse during most recent contact with staff at a general psychiatric clinic (n = 77)	Disclosure of Physical abuse (n = 72)	Disclosure of emotional abuse (n = 61)	Disclosure of sexual abuse (n = 55)
No	40 (55 %)	23 (38 %)	37 (67 %)
Yes, he/she knew already	2 (3 %)	2 (3 %)	3 (5 %)
Yes, when he/she asked about it	9 (12 %)	17 (28 %)	6 (11 %)
Yes, I Told him/her spontaneously	18 (25 %)	18 (29 %)	7 (13 %)
Unknown	3 (4 %)	1 (2 %)	2 (4 %)
Disclosure of abuse to others then staff at the most recent contact in a general psychiatric clinic (n = 77)
No	8 (11 %)	3 (5 %)	11 (20 %)
Yes, partly	44 (61 %)	44 (72 %)	34 (62 %)
Yes, about all of it	18 (25 %)	14 (23 %)	10 (18 %)
Unknown	2 (3 %)	0 (0 %)	0 (0 %)

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/NLRF2O

By:  Örmon K1, Sunnqvist C2, Bahtsevani C2, Levander MT3.

• 1Department of Care Science, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, 205 06, Malmö, Sweden. Karin.ormon@mah.se.
• 2Department of Care Science, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, 205 06, Malmö, Sweden.
• 3Department of Criminology, Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden. 
• BMC Psychiatry. 2016 Mar 24;16(1):79. doi: 10.1186/s12888-016-0789-6.

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