Psychiatric state of college students with a history of childhood sexual abuse

Background Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) seriously influences children’s psychological status. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between CSA and the psychiatric disorders. Methods An anonymous and retrospective questionnaire survey was carried out in 1307 college students (aged 18–25 years; 701 females, 606 males) to investigate the participants’ CSA experience by means of a complete random sampling method. The Symptom Check-List-90 (SCL-90) test was used to study the victims’ psychiatric aspects. Results 22.11% (155/701) of the female students and 14.69% (89/606) of the male students experienced physical and/or non-physical contact CSA before age 18, with a significant difference between female and male ( P