Ptsd in Female Victims of Sexual Assault

Women are well aware of the scary but true reality that in their lifetime there is a possibility that they may experience the utmost violation of themselves, sexual assault. One in six women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime (Rainn, 2006). As a society, we learn and are aware of this, but an important question to be asked is, why are some women able to accept and move on from the act and others struggle daily, never really moving on from their experience? It could be because some women are stronger than others, but perhaps there are preconceived and situational factors that cause women to be unable to move forward in life and in the cases presented in this paper, develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in simple terms is a disorder that is experienced after having an unusual traumatic event occur, such as a near death incident, rape, combat, natural disaster or motor vehicle accident, just to name a few. Rape is actually the largest cause of PTSD in both genders, and the lifetime frequency of the disorder for rape victims and sexual assault victims is 32% and 31% respectively (Resick, 2001). Many people may experience symptoms of PTSD directly following a sexual assault, but what this information tells us is that nearly one third of all victims will forever be negatively affected because of the incident. One person’s ten minutes of pleasure or satisfaction is another person’s lifetime suffering. The situational factors studied in this paper include whether victims who acknowledge their rape are more likely to develop PTSD than those who do not and if the victim’s appraisals of the trauma and its consequences affect the prevalence of PTSD. The preconceived factor studied is the age at which the first sexual assault was experienced. Layman, Gidycz, and Lynn’s (1996) study questions whether there are differences in post assault symptoms, defense mechanisms, sexual revictimization, and dissociative disorders between

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