Does Childhood Rape Affects A Child's Mental Health

Sexually Skinned

Does childhood rape affect a child’s mental health in the long-run? The mental health of a minor is very predominant throughout their life not only for their personal well being , but also for the well being of their future. A child’s mental and psychological development can be negatively altered by a plethora of conditions and events. One of the most common ways a kid’s cerebral health in general can be distinctively damaged is the traumatic event of childhood rape.

When a child experiences any kind of sexual violation including rape, various areas of health are impacted. Young kids who have had to encounter such occurrences undergo drastic changes in their brain chemicals and behavioural

Some of the most prevailing mental disorders are depression, suicide, alcohol problems, eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction. Many of these issues are caused not only because of the trauma itself but the amount of fear and hysteria caused after it. Hysteria in a kid’s mind creates great amounts of psychological detriment. While all of the mental disorders in a young child are utterly oppressive, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be the most damaging in a young one’s behavioural health. “...PTSD involves the persistent re-experiences of the traumatic event...PTSD can also be associated with persistent symptoms of increased arousal such as difficulty falling asleep, anger outbursts or irritability, difficulty concentrating or hypervigilance” (Gail Hornor, medscape.com). Children that have posttraumatic stress disorder often experience ‘flashbacks’ of their rape incident as if it were reoccuring to them all over again. Several symptoms that kids display occur in a synchronized sequence like outlines to trace over the disorder of PTSD. “ One way to understand some sexually abused children’s symptoms patterns is to conceptualize them as developmental manifestations of posttraumatic stress disorder” (Goodwin, journals.sagepub.com). Rape experienced by someone living in their young ages of life

Often times, large amounts of children do not completely recall the incident until their adolescent years or even until adulthood. Time and time again adolescents and adults who suffer from delayed mental disorders describe a blur in their memory associated with the occurrence as children. “Victims may remember in exquisite detail what was happening just before and after they realized they were being attacked, including context and the sequence of events. However, they are likely to have very fragmented and incomplete memories for much of what happens after that” (David Lisak, time.com). In a lot of cases, children who have incoherent memories end up with a mental disorder or illness in their life later on as they start piecing their sketchy recollections together. Adults with a history of childhood rape may ordeal through many illness symptoms that can become a burden for the grown man or woman to overcome. “The symptom patterns manifested by some adult survivors...seem to fit the features of chronic or delayed PTSD, intrusive thoughts, constricted affect, avoidance, and sleep disturbances” (Lindberg and Distad, journals.sagepub.com). In recent studies made by skilled psychologists, there has been several comparisons on the effects of mental illnesses with women who have a history of child sexual abuse to the effects on women