It’s Mental Health Awareness Week in Canada, and it’s a perfect time to bring some awareness to the staggering correlation between child sexual abuse and mental illness.

The recently published Statistics Canada Community Health Survey, showed that not only did 1 in 3 Canadian adults suffer child abuse in their lifetime, but many had mental health disorders in adulthood.

“Even when we looked at what’s most minor and what some people today would still argue is not abuse, those are still related right across the board with strong effects for all the mental conditions we looked at,” said Afifi, associate professor in the department of community health sciences at the University of Manitoba.

“As a Canadian, I find the number to be very large and alarming. As a child maltreatment researcher, that’s the number I expected to see.” [Huffington Post]

Let’s look at some hard numbers, courtesy of Little Warriors:

• 60% of women with panic disorder are victims of child sexual abuse.
• Child victims of sexual abuse have been found to display a wide range of symptomology, such as: low self-esteem, guilt, self blame, social withdrawal, marital and family problems, depression, somatic complaints, difficulties with sexuality, eroticized behaviour and irrational fears.
• There has been retrospective correlation of psychiatric disorders in adulthood with unwanted childhood sexual experiences.
• The long-term consequences of childhood sexual experiences with adults have been demonstrated to include, anxiety, deliberate self-harm, depression, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, eating disorders, poor self-esteem, prostitution, and sexual dysfunction.

I am a ‘one in three’, I survived childhood sexual abuse, and I’ve dealt with (and continue to deal with) my own bouts with depression. It is a huge epidemic, and from first-hand experience, mental illness affects not just those who suffer from it, but everyone around them as well.