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Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity
BACKGROUND: Gang members engage in many high-risk sexual activities that may be associated with psychiatric morbidity. Victim-focused research finds high prevalence of sexual violence towards women affiliated with gangs. AIMS: To investigate associations between childhood maltreatment and psychiatri...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Cambridge University Press
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7525108/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32338230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.69 |
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author | Coid, Jeremy González, Rafael A. Kallis, Constantinos Zhang, Yamin Liu, YuanYuan Wood, Jane Quigg, Zara Ullrich, Simone |
author_facet | Coid, Jeremy González, Rafael A. Kallis, Constantinos Zhang, Yamin Liu, YuanYuan Wood, Jane Quigg, Zara Ullrich, Simone |
author_sort | Coid, Jeremy |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Gang members engage in many high-risk sexual activities that may be associated with psychiatric morbidity. Victim-focused research finds high prevalence of sexual violence towards women affiliated with gangs. AIMS: To investigate associations between childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity on coercive and high-risk sexual behaviour among gang members. METHOD: Cross-sectional survey of 4665 men 18–34 years in Great Britain using random location sampling. The survey oversampled men from areas with high levels of violence and gang membership. Participants completed questionnaires covering violent and sexual behaviours, experiences of childhood disadvantage and trauma, and psychiatric diagnoses using standardised instruments. RESULTS: Antisocial men and gang members had high levels of sexual violence and multiple risk behaviours for sexually transmitted infections, childhood maltreatment and mental disorders, including addictions. Physical, sexual and emotional trauma were strongly associated with adult sexual behaviour and more prevalent among gang members. Other violent behaviour, psychiatric morbidity and addictions accounted for high-risk and compulsive sexual behaviours among gang members but not antisocial men. Gang members showed precursors before age 15 years of adult preference for coercive rather than consenting sexual behaviour. CONCLUSIONS: Gang members show inordinately high levels of childhood trauma and disadvantage, sexual and non-sexual violence, and psychiatric disorders, which are interrelated. The public health problem of sexual victimisation of affiliated women is explained by these findings. Healthcare professionals may have difficulties promoting desistance from adverse health-related behaviours among gang members whose multiple high-risk and violent sexual behaviours are associated with psychiatric morbidity, particularly addictions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7525108 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Cambridge University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75251082020-10-07 Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity Coid, Jeremy González, Rafael A. Kallis, Constantinos Zhang, Yamin Liu, YuanYuan Wood, Jane Quigg, Zara Ullrich, Simone Br J Psychiatry Papers BACKGROUND: Gang members engage in many high-risk sexual activities that may be associated with psychiatric morbidity. Victim-focused research finds high prevalence of sexual violence towards women affiliated with gangs. AIMS: To investigate associations between childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity on coercive and high-risk sexual behaviour among gang members. METHOD: Cross-sectional survey of 4665 men 18–34 years in Great Britain using random location sampling. The survey oversampled men from areas with high levels of violence and gang membership. Participants completed questionnaires covering violent and sexual behaviours, experiences of childhood disadvantage and trauma, and psychiatric diagnoses using standardised instruments. RESULTS: Antisocial men and gang members had high levels of sexual violence and multiple risk behaviours for sexually transmitted infections, childhood maltreatment and mental disorders, including addictions. Physical, sexual and emotional trauma were strongly associated with adult sexual behaviour and more prevalent among gang members. Other violent behaviour, psychiatric morbidity and addictions accounted for high-risk and compulsive sexual behaviours among gang members but not antisocial men. Gang members showed precursors before age 15 years of adult preference for coercive rather than consenting sexual behaviour. CONCLUSIONS: Gang members show inordinately high levels of childhood trauma and disadvantage, sexual and non-sexual violence, and psychiatric disorders, which are interrelated. The public health problem of sexual victimisation of affiliated women is explained by these findings. Healthcare professionals may have difficulties promoting desistance from adverse health-related behaviours among gang members whose multiple high-risk and violent sexual behaviours are associated with psychiatric morbidity, particularly addictions. Cambridge University Press 2020-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7525108/ /pubmed/32338230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.69 Text en © The Authors 2020 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Papers Coid, Jeremy González, Rafael A. Kallis, Constantinos Zhang, Yamin Liu, YuanYuan Wood, Jane Quigg, Zara Ullrich, Simone Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
title | Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
title_full | Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
title_fullStr | Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
title_full_unstemmed | Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
title_short | Gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
title_sort | gang membership and sexual violence: associations with childhood maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity |
topic | Papers |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7525108/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32338230 http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.69 |
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