E-ISSN : 2733-4538
There are a lot of articles written in the area of impact of sexual abuse on the mental health in western countries, whereas this is a relative new land to korean psychologist. The author surveyed and summarized in this article the researches in this area to draw attention of korean psychologists to this subject. The psychological symptoms resulting from experiences of sexual abuse can be classified into affective, cognitive peceptive, physical, interpersonal, behavioral and sexual area. In the affective area the sexually abused show frequently anxiety, obsession, helplessness, depression, anger, shame, guilty feeling and low self esteem, in the cognitive perceptive area dissociation, denial, repression, distortion, hallucination, in the physical area psychogenic pain, sleep disorder and distorted body images, in the interpersonal relationship area fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, hyper responsibility, hyper control, unclear boundary and revictimization, in the behavioral area self injury, aggressive behavior, eating disorder, alcohol and drug abuse, and in the sexual area they often show distorted sexual identity, sexual dysfunction, confuse often sex with affection, and involve sometimes in promiscuity.