Cumulative trauma: The impact of child sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, and spouse abuse

Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace: The Interface and Impact of General Incivility and Sexual Harassment.

“…This last finding highlights the fact that forms of mistreatment that do not violate law can, nevertheless, be harmful to employees. More generally, these outcome findings were consistent with the literatures on multiple victimization and trauma (e.g., Follette et al, 1996;Green et al, 2000;Pimlott-Kubiak & Cortina, 2003), suggesting that exposure to a constellation of interpersonally abusive events increases risk that professional and personal problems will manifest.…”

“…Whereas experiencing workplace incivility by itself is known to have a multitude of negative consequences, targets that also encounter gender and sexualized harassment may suffer even more adverse outcomes. Support for this argument comes from studies in the clinical psychology literature documenting effects of multiple stressors, victimizations, and traumas (e.g., Banyard, Williams, & Siegel, 2001;Follette, Polusny, Bechtle, & Naugle, 1996). For example, the additive impact of life stressorsparticularly negative life events-has long been documented in studies of depression (e.g., Brown & Harris, 1978;Dohrenwend & Dohrenwend, 1974).…”

Childhood trauma and adulthood physical health in Mexico

“…Previous studies have included some, but not all of these control variables, e.g., education and age (Felitti et al 1998;Shaw and Krause 2002), while others have only included age as a covariate (Spertus et al 2003). Also, although previous research has shown a positive relationship between childhood and adulthood trauma exposure (Breslau et al 1999;Coid et al 2001;Follette et al 1996;Schaaf and McCanne 1998), not all studies that have examined the effect of childhood trauma on adulthood mental and physical health have controlled for adulthood trauma. Furthermore, previous work often has not included other variables that could affect physical health and be intertwined with trauma, such as PTSD or depressed affect.…”

Phenomenology and psychological assessment of complex posttraumatic states

“…Because both childhood and adult traumatic events can produce psychological difficulties, current symptomatology in such individuals may represent (a) the effects of relatively recent (i.e., adult) traumatic experiences, (b) the chronic effects of childhood abuse, (c) the additive effects of childhood abuse and adult traumatic experiences (e.g., flashbacks to both childhood and adult victimization), or (d) the exacerbating interaction of child abuse and adult traumatic experiences (e.g., especially severe, regressed, dissociated, or even transiently psychotic responses; Briere, 2004). Beyond the interaction between different traumatic events, a general finding in the trauma literature is that the greater the number of traumatic events that have occurred in an individual's life, the more posttraumatic symptomatology is likely to be present (e.g., Follette, Polusney, Bechtle, & Naugle, 1996). For this reason, the client's recent and remote trauma history should be taken into account before his or her symptoms can be attributed solely to a given event-especially when the symptomatology is complex or pervasive.…”