{"id":10209,"date":"2022-10-20T19:49:51","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T16:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=10209"},"modified":"2022-10-20T19:49:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T16:49:54","slug":"british-study-unbearable-misery-caused-by-sexual-violence-in-teenagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=10209","title":{"rendered":"British study: Unbearable misery caused by sexual violence in teenagers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A significant part of the psychological problems faced by teenagers is due to sexual violence, with girls being more vulnerable, since they face such incidents five times more often than boys. Specifically, 14-18.7% of girls’ psychological problems in adolescence and 3.7-10.5% of boys’ psychological problems at the age of 17 are due to experiences of sexual violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unpleasant feelings that overwhelm adolescents after the event of sexual violence last for at least a year afterwards and escalate, from hopelessness and self-harm to attempted suicide by the time they reach 17. And the effects continue with a series of confounding factors that prevail in the emotional field of these children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the conclusions of a study published in the scientific journal The Lancet, entitled “The impact of sexual violence in mid-adolescence on mental health: a UK population-based longitudinal study” (https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/S2215-0366(22)00271-1<\/a>), which involved more than 10,000 adolescents, 5119 girls and 4852 boys.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Foundings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girls and boys who participated in the study were asked about the type of sexual violence they experienced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20.4% of girls and 5.4% of boys had experienced some form of sexual violence, 19.4% of girls and 5.2% of boys had experienced unwanted sexual approach and 5.3% of girls and 1% of boys had been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study showed that the unhappiness due to sexual violence experienced by girls was twice as high as that of girls who had not experienced sexual violence (it reached an average of 109% with a range of 51% – 168%). For boys the rates were even higher, reaching an average of 156%, two and a half times higher than boys who had not experienced sexual violence, with a range of 59% \u2013 253%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The risk of adolescent self-injury after the episode of sexual violence was 79% for girls and 116% for boys. Self-injury involved cutting, burning, bruising, taking an overdose, pulling their hair or hurting themselves in other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The risk of suicide attempt was 75% for girls and 173% for boys. In the hypothetical scenario where sexual violence did not exist, the prevalence of adolescent mental health burden at age 17 would be 3.7\u201310.5% lower in boys and 14.0\u201318.7% lower in girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for suicide attempt, it would reach 9.1% from 11% measured in cases of sexual violence and the feeling of unhappiness would drop to 19.5% from 22.6% measured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For boys, suicide attempt would drop to 3.9% from 4.3% recorded and feeling increased unhappiness would be reduced to 9.8% from 10.2% recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study highlights the major impact that experiences of sexual violence in adolescence can have on mental health, especially for girls where the incidence is five times higher, and points out that eliminating such experiences at this critical developmental stage would significantly reduce problems of mental health and would reduce the gap of mental illness between the two sexes of this age.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The findings of this study, together with previous evidence, highlight the need to examine more seriously and directly for the mental health of adolescents the specific risk factor (sexual violence) in order to draw up a policy that will lead to the limitation of the phenomenon on the one hand, and on the other hand , will give appropriate support to affected teenagers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A significant part of the psychological problems faced by teenagers is due to sexual violence, with girls being more vulnerable, since they face such…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2993,2811],"tags":[3214,2465,3769,3768,3318],"class_list":["post-10209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-life","category-wellness","tag-life","tag-sexual-violence","tag-suicides","tag-teenagers","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10214,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209\/revisions\/10214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}