Citation

Thombs BD, Bernstein DP, Ziegelstein RC, Bennett W, Walker EA. Gen. Hosp. Psychiatry 2007; 29(1): 8-13.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital and McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3T 1E4. brett.thombs@mcgill.ca

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2006.10.013

PMID

17189738

Abstract

BACKGROUND: A number of medical practice guidelines and recommendations call for screening adult patients for a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, but no brief screening tools exist. The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy of a two-item screener for physical or sexual abuse in childhood. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study of randomly selected women (aged 18-65 years) from a large health maintenance organization. One thousand two hundred twenty-five patients were administered a questionnaire, which included two items in a brief screener: (a) "When I was growing up, people in my family hit me so hard that it left me with bruises or marks" and (b) "When I was growing up, someone tried to touch me in a sexual way or tried to make me touch them." A subset of 216 patients completed a semistructured interview for a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood. RESULTS: The two-item screener was sensitive (84.8%) and specific (88.1%) for detecting a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, as determined by the semistructured interview. CONCLUSIONS: The two-item screener provides an accurate tool, which is easily integrated into a comprehensive health questionnaire or administered verbally by a clinician, to assess for history of abuse.

Language: en