健康英语新闻:Sex abuses result in mental illness in female victims: report

CANBERRA, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- As many as a quarter of Australian women have experienced some form of assault or sexual abuse, and the higher proportion of the abuse, the higher rates of metal illness a woman tends to suffer from, a new study released on Wednesday found.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales conducted the study survey of 4451 Australian women aged 16 to 85. It looked at their experience of the four most common types of gender-based violence - sexual assault, rape, stalking and being badly beaten by their partners.

About 15 percent of Australian women report sexual assault, while eight percent report rape, 10 percent said they have a stalker and eight percent report being beaten by their partner.

It found strong links between those four types of violence and mental health problems including attempted suicide, posttraumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.

Among the women who experienced at least one form of violence, 30 percent had a mood disorder, nearly 40 percent an anxiety disorder, 23 percent were abusing substances and 15 percent were affected by posttraumatic stress syndrome.

For the women who suffered higher levels of violence, the rates of anxiety disorders was 77 percent, 52 percent for mood disorders, substance abuse 47 percent and posttraumatic stress syndrome 56 percent.

More than six percent of women experienced one form of violent had attempted suicide, compared to 35 percent of women who suffered at least three forms of violence.

Public health expert Dr Susan Rees from the University of New South Wales' school of psychiatry, who led the research, said she is especially concerned about the suicide rate of women who are abused.

"What we found was that there's a high association or a strong association between exposure to gender-based violence and all the three broad classes of mental disorder - so that includes mood, anxiety, substance abuse - and a very high association with attempted suicide," she said in the report released on Wednesday.

"Women who've not experienced gender-based violence have about a 1.6 percent rate of attempted suicide and that increased to six percent of women who had experienced one type of gender-based violence."

She said that gender-based violence was also associated with physical disability, impaired quality of life and a worsening of any existing mental disorders.

Dr Rees called for the health care system, particularly psychiatric services, to work closer with women's services to improve support for victims of violence.

She added that the federal government also need to underscore the importance of getting to the root cause of the violence against women by looking at attitudes towards women and gender inequality.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.