Coping and Dissociation Among Female College Students: Reporting Childhood Abuse Experiences
✍ Scribed by Deborah Ellen Gipple; Sang Min Lee; Ana Puig
- Publisher
- American Counseling Association
- Year
- 2006
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 89 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1099-0399
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This study examined the relationship among coping strategies, dissociation, and childhood abuse experiences of female college students. Results provided support for the theoretical links between 3 types of child abuse experience (sexual abuse, physical abuse, and negative home environment) and coping style and dissociation. The study's results add to an increased understanding of the relationship between coping strategies and dissociation as these processes relate to specific types of childhood abuse experiences among female college students.
T ransition into college life is an inherently stressful time, and a history of childhood abuse can negatively affect multiple aspects of a female college student's life. Childhood abuse survivors may be overly reliant on maladaptive coping styles or underuse adaptive coping styles. Female college students newly separated from their families may feel safe to explore different adaptations; thus, college counselors are very likely to encounter clients presenting with increasingly complex and problematic issues, among them histories of child abuse . For example, a recent review of 47 retrospective studies on childhood sexual abuse (CSA) found that between 15% to 30% of women and 3% to 15% of men reported exposure to unwanted sexual attention during childhood . The present study focused on female college students because child abuse prevalence is higher for this group . Increased use of counseling services by students with these presenting issues calls for improvement in the ability of counselors to understand childhood abuse survivors' coping mechanisms. This awareness could inform interventions aimed at assisting female college students with unresolved childhood abuse issues.
Abuse of children has been documented throughout history. According to DeMause (1974), "the further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused" (p. 1). Child abuse can be defined as the violation of trust and boundaries perpetrated by adults charged with protecting a child and can include physical and sexual abuse as well as a negative home environment. Physical abuse refers to the nonaccidental use of force against a child and