repressive religion or sexula trauma (+ ocd)

[MonDie]

There aren't many good forums for discussing psychological science, and I thought this thread might appeal to the secular community here. Although I'm not a psych student and I couldn't make the case as well as I had hoped, I will contend that erotic impairments due to abuse or trauma could at times be mistaken for superficial ideology, namely sexually repressive, religious ideology, with terrible consequences. In fact, I have only seen conservatism related to the openness factor in the Big Five, which is mostly irrelevant to psychiatric diagnoses.

 

The disorder I will focus on is OCD. Patients exhibit any of an array of obsessions, including sexual and religious obsessions, the latter being termed "scrupulosity". They may even inflict damage to their own bodies. OCD is comorbid with depression and PTSD, and depression generally involves a dysregulation of negative emotions such as shame and guilt. In fact OCD is treated with SSRIs.

As for the etiology of OCD, it was previously classed as an anxiety disorder, but the DSM-5 categorizes it as an obsessive-compulsive related disorder. It is a highly heterogenous disorder associated with PTSD and various forms of abuse and neglect as well as tic disorders and autism. However, types of abuse tend to co-occur, whereas sexual abuse in particular may play a key role.

 

Relationship between childhood sexual abuse and obsessive-compulsive disorder: case control study

Caspi, Vishne, Sasson, Gross, Livne, Zohar, 2008

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19398821

 

Childhood Sexual Abuse and Adult Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders in Women

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=481660

 

The first study investigates the prevalence of child sexual abuse (csa) in an OCD sample, a panic disorder sample, and a control group. Although it wasn't tested for significance, we see the same rate of contact-csa (53%) in the two psychiatric samples. The second study looks at monozygotic twins of which only one experienced sexual abuse, and it more or less proves that panic disorder (along with depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and bulemia) is a result of sexual abuse.

Caspi et al note that "an interesting question not studied yet is whether OCD after sexual abuse has more sexual themes. This could be the subject for further studies."

 

Are stressful life events causally related to the severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms? A monozygotic twin difference study

Vidal-Ribas, Stringaris, Ruck, Serlachius, Lichtenstein, Mataix-Cols, 2015

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25511316

 

This study also looks at monozygotic twin pairs, measuring the extent to which they differ in obsessive-compulsive symptoms and correlating it with exposure to stressful life events (SLEs). The introduction mention a previous MZ twin study associated OCD with "particularly sexual assault". Their study identifies "sexual abuse" and "abuse and family disruption" in the "phenotypic relation" section even after controlling for depression, but "when controlling for genetic and shared environment effects, only differences in the factor 'abuse and family disruption' were positively and independently related to differences in OCS severity." However they note that "abuse and family disruption" is not a shared environmental factor in this instance due that being controlled out, so they suggest it relates to either recall bias, or to relations with spouses and children (their own families) or peers or coworkers. However, sexual abuse and non-sexual assault still maintain a positive, though non-significant, relationship for the within pair analysis of this study. It occurred to me that OCD is a highly heterogenous disorder, and it might regain significance if they focused on the factor related to "obsessions (such as aggressive, sexual, religious or somatic)". It also occurred to me that sexual abuse or sexual assault may initiate a downward spiral in which OCD may or may not arise as a secondary effect.

 

Now I will move away from OCD and focus on the direct relationship between CSA and erotic functioning. "The female Sexual Self-Schema Scale includes two positive factors: (a) a tendency to experience passionate/romantic feelings; and, (b) behavioral openness. In addition, women’s sexual self-schemas may include negative elements, such as © embarrassment or conservatism, which deter or inhibit sexual expression." I found it interesting that the only sexually "negative" factor is described as "conservative". This factor appears to be mostly unrelated to CSA. However, the below study finds that female CSA victims tended to score lower on the "personal distress" factor of the Sexual Satisfaction Scale-Women, especially in more severe instances.

 

Sexual Function and Satisfaction in Adults Based on the Definition of Child Sexual Abuse

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2631235/

 

I look forward to seeing what other users can contribute.

Edited September 29, 2016 by MonDie