The problem selected for examination is researching the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse. If the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse are related to problems confronted by social workers (e.g. substance abuse, domestic violence and other forms of antisocial conduct, psychiatric problems, etc.), the implications for social workers and social work practice are enormous since these are social problems with huge costs both to the individual and society.
Specifically, social workers will need to consider the possibility of childhood sexual abuse in their interactions with clients, and then determine and utilize interactional methods and resources related to remediating these effects. This paper examines four articles about the long term effects of childhood sexual abuse in an effort to learn more about the selected research problem.
Rew (1989) has pointed out that debilitated self-esteem underlies a great variety of psychological and social problems. People who take drugs, abuse alcohol, suffer eating disorders, and participate in antisocial conduct often evidence levels of self-esteem that are decidedly lower than those of people without these problems. Rew wondered if one of the contributors to low self-esteem was childhood sexual abuse.
In her investigation of this possibility, Rew (1989) assessed level of childhood sexual abuse, level of self-esteem, and level of depression in a sample of 55 baccalaureate nursing students. She found that in her random sample, over 62 percent of the nurses had at least one experience of childhood sexual abuse. In her comparison of abused and non-abused subjects, Rew found both significantly lower levels of self-esteem and significantly higher levels of depression among the abused group.
What Rew's (1989) study shows is that low self-esteem as well as depression are long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse. Further, since low self-esteem is associated with so...