Small Study Links Sexual Trauma to Physical and Psychological Ailments in Midlife

Researchers saw elevated rates of high blood pressure, poor sleep, anxiety, and depression among survivors.

ljubaphoto/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

For decades, researchers have observed that traumatic experiences can have long-lasting health effects. A new study links women’s trauma from sexual assault and harassment to a suite of physical and psychological symptoms that can profoundly impact quality of life.

The small study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, surveyed 305 non-smoking women in Pittsburgh between the ages of 40 and 60, and found that 19 percent of participants reported experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace, while 22 percent said they had at some point in their lives been sexually assaulted. Thurston found that women who had experienced workplace sexual harassment had significantly greater odds of high blood pressure and sleep issues, and that sexual assault was associated with poor sleep, elevated depression, anxiety.

Rebecca C. Thurston, the study’s lead author and a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, builds upon previous studies on the long term effects of sexual harassment. In an earlier study, released in April of this year, Thurston found that women who had experienced trauma—including some kinds of sexual harassment—had less flexible blood vessels, making them more prone to have high blood pressure. This line of research is in the spotlight right now, as the nation reacts to psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about her alleged sexual assault by supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh—and the psychological problems that she says have plagued her since.

Thurston presented her research this week at the North American Menopause Society’s annual meeting. JoAnn Pinkerton, the executive director of the NAMS and a practicing OB-GYN, told Mother Jones that the study highlights the importance of assessing trauma as part of medical care.

Physicians “need to ask about sexual assault and sexual harassment, and its occurrence needs to be taken into account for health risks of women,” she said.

Thurston’s study reported rates of harassment and assault lower than nationally reported numbers, which can vary greatly. A 2017 meta-analysis found that asking questions like, “Have you experienced sexual harassment?” resulted in a rate of 24 percent of women—but when researchers listed specific types of harassment, that number jumped to 58 percent. A poll conducted by a nonprofit group called Stop Street Harassment found that 81 percent of women reported sexual harassment in their lifetime.

Debra Borys, a Los Angeles psychologist specializing in treating trauma who wasn’t involved in Thurston’s study, pointed out the link that Thurston found just a correlation—it doesn’t prove that sexual harassment and assault cause the conditions that the study observed. 

“You can’t say outright from a study like this—or perhaps any study except a longitudinal one that follows them before harassment, through harassment, then after harassment—that harassment causes [these symptoms],” she said, though she pointed out that the study’s conclusion support ample anecdotal evidence from psychologists and therapists. A further confounding factor: The problems that Thurston observed—high blood pressure, sleep disturbances, depression, and anxiety—are common among even middle aged women who haven’t experienced sexual harassment or assault. What’s more, the study excluded women on antidepressants.

There’s also the problem of the study’s small sample size—which means that it isn’t representative of all women. In the future, Thurston hopes to widen her scope to account for the fact that African American and Hispanic women have higher rates of hypertension, and to account for the missing or overlooked experiences of LGBTQ women. 

In the meantime, she hopes the current study will prompt doctors to take trauma into account when treating physical symptoms. “We think about issues of sexual harassment, sexual assaults, these are obviously societal problems,” she said. “These experiences also have implications for both wounds: mental health and physical health.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate