Citation

Feiring C, Taska L, Chen K. Child Maltreat. 2002; 7(1): 26-41.

Affiliation

New Jersey Medical School UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Department of Psychiatry, Newark 07107,USA. feirinca@umdnj.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11838512

Abstract

This study concerns the nature of specific attributions for sexual abuse and their relation to psychological distress over time. Participants (80 children and 57 adolescents) were seen within 8 weeks of discovery of the abuse and 1 year later They described why they believed the abuse happened, rated the extent to which internal and external attributions for the abuse event applied to them, and completed measures of general attribution styleforeveryday events, shame for the abuse, and symptoms of depression, PTSD, and self-esteem. Parents and teachers rated behavior problems. Abuse-specific internal attributions were consistently related to higher levels of psychopathology and were particularly importantforpredicting PTSD symptoms and parent and teacher reports of internalizing behavior problems, even after controlling for age, gender, abuse events, and general attributional style. Shame also was an important predictor of symptom level and mediated the relation between abuse-specific internal attributions and PTSD symptoms.

Language: en