Child Abuse Survivor’s Cost of Health Care
Synopis of study Women who suffered child abuse spend more on health care: Even decades after the abuse ended, middle-age women who suffered physical or sexual abuse as children spend up to one-third more than average in health-care costs.
My comments: Researchers were surprised the effects of child abuse on the female child abuse survivors lasted well into their 40′s, long after the abuse ended. That statement tells how little they know. It doesn’t ever stop affecting child abuse survivors. As a survivor, I can tell you the magnitude of the effects of the abuse, physically and mentally, are so great that they have ingrained themselves into my personality. It affected who I chose as friends, who I married and how I parented my children. Each of those areas cascade into a million little daily decisions that not only affected me, but affected all those around me. It affected what career fields I could and could not go into, the length of time it took to attain a degree, as much of my energy for 50 years was spent trying to survive life long debilitating depression.
I am 57 years old and while I will always strive to eliminate / overcome my child abuse effects, I believe I will be weeding out the multitude of ways child abuse has affected me until the day I die. For example, the words “I’m sorry” blurt out of my mouth for things I have no control over, before my brain even engages. This has caused me more than a few embarrassing moments as business settings place the spotlight on just how inappropriate the comment appears to others. And while I work on eliminating this particular effect until I overcome it, there are so many more, that I don’t see an end to this challenge.
I’m glad researchers are beginning to look at how child abuse effects reach far into the future of adult child abuse survivors, however it is disheartening to know where they are at in their level of scientific knowledge of the subject.