As if getting sexually abused as a child wasn’t bad enough, a new study has found that the despicable act may increase victims’ chances of heart attack, heart disease and stroke.
During a presentation on Sunday at an American Heart Association conference, researchers reported that women who suffered repeated episodes of forced sex in childhood or adolescence had a 62% higher risk of cardiovascular disease!
Janet Rich-Edwards, lead author of the study which used data collected between 1989 and 2007 from more than 67,000 female nurses, told sources:
“It’s almost hard to imagine stressors much greater than physical and sexual abuse. When we think about stress and health, abuse is the elephant in the room.”
Researchers believe that the trauma from a childhood abuse may lead to a lasting stress, which can be associated with higher resting heart rates and blood pressure.
It may also lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. The biggest factor in the correlation between sexual abuse and cardiovascular illness was the tendency for abused girls to have gained weight throughout adolescence and adulthood.
The study also exposed just how common sexual abuse is. Of the 67,000 women who took part in the Nurse’s Health Study, 9% reported severe physical abuse during childhood and 11% reported forced sex.
To highlight the importance of awareness, Rich-Edwards explained:
“The first thing is to bring child abuse out of the shadows. Abuse is far more common than most people realize, including most physicians. Increasing the awareness of the medical profession and the public about the prevalence of abuse would help reduce the shame that enshrouds it and encourage frank discussions about the long-term health implications of abuse.”
It’s so sad that child abuse (sexual or physical) is more common than our society would like to admit, but the increasing evidence of future complications is exactly why we need to acknowledge it! After all, we’ll never be able to stop child abuse unless everybody starts talking about it.
