When Violence Can Appear With Different Male Partners: Identification of Resilient and Non-resilient Women in the European Union

Past Child Abuse and Neglect in Adults From Northern Mexico: Development of a Scale and Prevalence

Child abuse has been present in Mexico but there have been few studies that analyze its effects in adults. There are no Mexican validated scales that measure the relationship between abuse experienced in childhood and its effects into adulthood. The purpose of this study is to develop a past child abuse and neglect scale to measure these phenomena in adults and also to analyze the relationship the effects have with other psychological variables (e.g., anxiety, depression, self-esteem, partner-violence, personality, and fatalism). There were 763 participants from Juarez City, located on the northern border of Mexico. All participants were above the age of 18 years. The scale was developed, and its psychometric properties were analyzed. A first analysis consisted of analyzing the factor structure of the scale items with an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and then a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to corroborate the factor structure. The resulting factors were guilt, relationship with parents, strong physical abuse, sexual abuse, mild physical and verbal abuse, and basic care. The internal reliabilities for all factors in both analyses were between Cronbach's alpha values of .77 and .92. Correlations of these factors with psychological variables were analyzed, and several statistically significant correlations were found. The scale has a good factor structure that correctly reflects the indicators of child abuse and neglect with good internal reliability values. The analysis showed that the prevalence rates of child abuse and neglect in Juarez were higher than those reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in other locations worldwide. Actions by governments, universities, and civil associations should take place to reduce these rates, especially because of their long-term physical, emotional, and psychological consequences.

“I’m a Winner, Not a Victim”: The Facilitating Factors of Post-Traumatic Growth among Women Who Have Suffered Intimate Partner Violence

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a positive psychological change following trauma. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is one such trauma. The aim of this phenomenological study was to explore PTG from the perspective of women who have survived IPV as well as their perceptions of PTG. Twenty-two female IPV survivors aged 23–56 who reached PTG, according to the working definition used, were interviewed. The overriding theme of the study was “I’m a winner, not a victim”, which describes the essence of the women’s experience of PTG. They described their experience as a shift from being suffering victims of IPV to becoming winners who enjoyed PTG. They felt that their positive attitude and personal strengths had helped them to reach PTG as well as to face the fact that they had been in an abusive relationship, thus forgiving and believing in themselves and taking responsibility for their own health and well-being. They sought knowledge about violence, how to process it, and how to respond to triggers. They set boundaries for their perpetrators and were in as little contact with them as possible. They chose the company of positive, supportive, and constructive people and situations where they were not being controlled. It was concluded that, even though suffering IPV is a terrible experience that no one should endure, the participants’ experiences had resulted in PTG that they treasured.

Psychometric Properties of the Checklist of Experiences of Psychological Abuse to the Couple in Adolescents and Young Adults

In Ibero-America, interest in the evaluation and prevention of violence in young couples has been increasing. However, there are not enough Spanish-speaking standardized questionnaires. The psychometric analyses of the Checklist of Experiences of Psychological Abuse to the Couple (CEPA) are presented as a subset of the Checklist of Experiences of Abuse to the Couple. Overall, 1,505 adolescents participated; 828 were women, and 677 were men, aged 14 to 21 years old. A confirmatory factor analysis with the Structural Equation Modeling Software version 6.2 (EQS) was performed to consider different factor models that were consistent with theoretical and empirical aspects about violence in young couples. A structure was obtained with one factor of higher order, "Psychological Aggression" (14 items), and the following three primary factors: (a) "Coercion" (four items), (b) "Humiliation" (five items), and (c) "Control" (five items); Cronbach's alpha ranged from .71 to .83. The overall scale and the three subscales correlated significantly with each other and with negative personality traits associated with gender. The results indicate that the scale has adequate psychometric properties for use in clinical practice and research.

Current evidence of childhood traumatic experiences in psychosis - focus on gender differences

Childhood abuse is common among people with psychosis and it is associated with poor illness outcomes. Some forms of childhood abuse are more common in women, but the impact of gender and childhood abuse in psychosis has been little investigated and evidence has never been put into a congruent frame. Herein, we conducted a narrative review to assess the impact of gender and childhood abuse in psychosis. Research articles were identified (n = 44) using a comprehensive electronic search of PubMed, Web-of-Science, Scopus and Cochrane databases. Women appeared to be at greater risk of sexual abuse than men. Women with childhood abuse report more positive and mood symptoms, and more suicide attempts compared to men. In addition, women exposed to childhood abuse display an earlier age of onset compared to not exposed, but this association is not present in men. Conversely, men with childhood abuse show more negative symptoms, substance use and a poorer cognitive performance compared to women. It seems therefore confirmed that gender and childhood abuse may impact on the outcome of psychosis, since not all gender differences found in patients who had been abused in their childhood are accounted by the overall differences between men and women with psychosis.