Childhood Abuse And Depressive Vulnerability

Any victim of sexual abuse faces the chance of having their development impacted. This is especially true amongst children. Studies have proven that children who have been sexually abused by a female offender often have different developmental experiences (T.A. Gannon, 2008, p. 356). Mental illness is yet another impact that victims face. Many sexual abuse victims transpire into states of depression, rage, and suicide; they even have strained relationships with certain individuals (Denov, 2014, p.

The last of the characteristics of childhood trauma are changed attitudes about life, people, and future possibilities (Terr, 1999). The traumatized child may lose hope of a fruitful future, may despise a particular gender due to abuse, or may even desire close contact with the same gender of the perpetrator. A last example demonstrating a traumatic characteristic is through a 16-year-old female client. A male family member sexually and physically abused this client as a child. Although most sexual assault victims may avoid persons of the same gender of the perpetrator, as described above, there are also victims that try to gain the attention of persons with the same gender of the perpetrator. This client demonstrates just that. The client is exceedingly flirtatious with male peers and staff of her residential facility. She has been caught several times attempting to perform sexual acts with her male peers and at times becomes very angry when she is not given the attention she desires from a male peer.

Only 5% of these females experienced gender dysphoria- which shows that other factors are important in gender development and that hormones weren’t a key factor of determining gender in this study. This criticism of the biological approach shows that it is too reductionist, in that it ignores other factors. As well it is deterministic, as it reduces human behaviour down to simply biology and the act of hormones on gender development, ignoring social and cultural influence.

These outside factors for adolescents could include who the adolescent socializes with, psychological instances from childhood, and even what are the accepted societal norms in the society that they are living in. Because of these factors, adolescents are at risk for depression. The stage of adolescents is the most emotional and sensitive stage, where the adolescent is trying to find themselves and their place of belonging. Adolescents with gender dysphoria are more susceptible to developing depression because they are forced to live in a society where there are not many people who are willing to readily accept them as for what they feel they are. Since every child grew up with the idea that your gender is your biological sex, individuals with gender dysphoria are even afraid to tell their parents and peers because of what is taught to them since the beginning. The fact that the adolescent finds out and understands that they do not fit in with society’s standard can lead them to depression. Many people want to feel as though they fit in somewhere and that they are accepted somewhere as well. For adolescents with gender dysphoria, since they already view themselves as completely out of place with their identity and with societal norms, it can be hard for them

Childhood experiences and attachments are crucial to our emotional development. Children around this country are abused and neglected every second. “Childhood maltreatment also represents a serious public health concern, with an estimated 3.3 million referrals to child protective agencies for suspected child maltreatment in 2005” (Bentley & Widom, 2009). Those children who are abused eventually become adults whom suffered from childhood trauma. Although a trauma may be considered to be in the past, for many the scars are ever so present when moving throughout life. Individuals who haven’t be exposed to high doses of stress and trauma are ready to go into fight or flight at any moment, but when this system is started over and over again,

In the past ten years researchers have increase their knowledge on the understanding of the different effects that maltreatment has on early brain development. A foundation has been set for the neurobiological explanations of children who have experienced sexual abuse in their early years of life. The explanations include areas of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional struggles. There are many different internal and external factors that associate with the way the child develops into adulthood. Variables that can be taken into account are individual factors and environmental factors. For example individual factors consist of children’s temperaments and vulnerability. In regards to environmental factors this contains how caregivers portray abuse along with overall family atmosphere. Some other specific variables associated with abuse are duration, amount of violence, and relationship between victim and abuser. In addition, age has a strong impact on the victim in regards to adult sexual behavior. When a child is abused at a young age he or she is more likely to engage in sexualized external behavior. At the age of six or younger, children have a higher chance to show their abuse through inappropriate and aggressive sexualized behavior. As for older children of twelve and up they lean more towards fear of sex. These children shoe more internal behavior problems as well (Aaron, 2012).

Tommy entered the house, it was quiet, and he went to the kitchen to get a snack. Tommy dropped his plate causing a loud clattering noise, waking his mother. Tommy’s mom was furious, walked around the corner and started beating Tommy for waking her. As she was beating him a man came around the corner to stop her. It was Tommy’s dad. In a blind rage, Tommy’s mom grabbed the gun from the kitchen drawer; the one she used to threaten Tommy for all his wrong doings and shot Tommy’s father. Tommy’s experiences of regular, yet unpredictable beatings ending with a traumatic death experience forever changed Tommy’s life. After a traumatic experience, a chemical imbalance in the brain occurs; leaving this untreated can cause someone to become a serial killer. Traumatic life experiences, abuse, and an inability to have healthy coping strategies can lead to a chemical imbalance in the brain. Abuse, trauma, and poor coping skills combined can lead to the creation of a killer. Criminologists have identified several common life experiences that convicted serial killer have had in common. One identified experience shared by convicted serial killers is the witnessing a murder or death. Another is experiencing abuse from a young age. The kind of is not as significant a factor, but many serial killers reported higher incidences of sexual and emotional abuse. Abuse combined with a significant traumatic experience has been determined to cause a chemical imbalance in the brain. Another

LGBT population have higher rates of depression among the youth. Statistics of depression compared between LGBT and the general population in Australia depicts that 57.2% of transgender and gender diverse were diagnosed of depression and 11.6 % had experience depression in their lifetime respectively (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007). Moreover, mental health among the LGBT is known to be poor in Australia as 36.2% of transgender and 24.4% of gay, lesbians and bisexual Australians met the scale of having major depression in 2005, and 6.8% when compared to the general population. Dejection among transgender women (male to female) under age 30 was on a high rate in La Trobe university study constitute

In the United States Transgender women (individuals who are sex-assigned male at birth but identify as female) experience high rates of severe depression due to pervasive discrimination that they face in society. According to Hoffman (2014), when compared to the general population, Transgender individuals experience much higher rates of depression with estimates as high as 62% (as cited in Clements-Noel, Marx, Guzman, and Katz, 2001). Due to these high rates of depression, Transgender women are at increased risk for overall negative health outcomes, which severely limits them from living happy, healthy, and productive lives. According to studies by Nemoto, Operario, Keatley, Nguyen, and Sugano, (2005) there is a growing understanding of the

Treating the many mental health disorders caused by childhood abuse-related trauma has proved to be challenging. Long established therapies, such as trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapies (TF-CBT) has been the typical choice of treatment for most clinicians (Raabe, Ehring, Marquenie, Olff, & Kindt, 2015). TF-CBT is based on the theory that memories linked to traumatic events create negative emotions that later on affect how the individual thinks about the traumatic event and can eventually lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Usually, the treatment for this mental health disorder features flooding, also known as a prolonged exposure (PE) method. This method involves having the patient face the negative emotions of the

For a person who is transgender, gender dysphoria sets in at a young age. The individual is uncomfortable and displeased with their biological sex because it does not match their gender identity. This is compounded with societal norms that use symbolic interactionism to show what the gender expression should look like. The pressure from family, friends, and society can cause discomfort and disappointment with the biological sex they are born, which results in anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems. The dysphoria often is a promoter to make the individual change their body and gender expression to be more in line with what is felt to be their gender identity. "A lot of the trauma that gender dysphoric children particularly experience is the lack of validation, the kind of ongoing, 'No, you 're not what you say you are; you are what the

Another important observation is that a good number of the participants are unable to identify and accept their femininity and grow into the full actualization of it and still remain at high risk of being abused physically, sexually and emotionally. They tend to be more

I have never been comfortable with the topic of gender dysphoria. Comer (2013) describes the disorder where a “…people persistently feel that a vast mistake has been made, they have been born the wrong sex, and gender changes would be desirable” (356). It is very hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea that a person would be unaccepting of the gender that they were born with. I found it very interesting to read some of the explainations that involve biological reasoning for the disorder. It helped me gain a little understanding about why some of the people might experience the thoughts about their bodies and genders. Comer says that children even as young as three years old can display hate towards girly clothing, prefer to be around boys,

The reason that mental health system believes that Gender Dysphoria should remain in the DSM is due to anyone that displays symptoms of distress or incongruity of their biological sex compared to their gender, should seek psychological help and treatment. When reading a post published on the Huffington Post by author Wynne Parry he quotes a clinical psychologist by the name of Robin Rosenberg, “Transgender people and their allies have pointed out that distress in gender dysphoria is not an inherent part of being transgender. This sets it apart from many other disorders in the DSM, because if someone is depressed, for example, he or she is, almost by definition, distressed as part of depression. In contrast, the distress that accompanies gender dysphoria arises as a result of a culture that stigmatizes people who do not conform to gender norms.” This quote is very important because it brings to light that gender nonconforming or transgender individuals experience distress due to culture and the lack of

Gender Identity Disorder can make a child; adolescent or adult feel awkward and alone. Gender Identity Disorder paired with either Gender Dysphoria or Transsexualism will disrupt the development of social skills and create more problems behaviorally. Normative studies present evidence of the co-morbidity through parent report data revealing that children with Gender Identity Disorder have on