Gastrointestinal symptoms in abused nonpatient women.

Background: Severely abused nonpatient women report a high number of gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and GI syndromes. Little is known about whether the abuse‒symptom relationship varies across different life, social, and community conditions.

Objective: To comparatively assess the timing, type and severity of physical and/or sexual abuse and GI symptoms of nonpatient women who contacted a lawyer for legal support with those who sought shelter in antiviolence centers.

Subjects and methods: Forty-six lawyer controls (LCs) (aged 29-80 years) and 67 women (aged 18-58 years) sheltered in antiviolence (V) centers completed an identical anonymous questionnaire with medical and abuse sections. The severity of abuse was assessed with the 0-6 Abuse Severity Measure (ASM). The associations between abuse characteristics and the number of symptoms were assessed with the Poisson regression model.

Results: Among the LC women, 65% experienced physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood and/or adulthood, whereas 100% of the V women did. In both groups, most women experienced combined sexual and physical abuse in childhood and adulthood. The ASM was < 2 in 57% of the LC and 18% of the V women. LC and V women reported an average of 4.9 and 4.6 GI symptoms, respectively. In both groups, women who had been both sexually and physically abused reported a greater number of GI symptoms. Childhood and adulthood abuse were associated with more GI symptoms only in V women. LC women with ASM > 2 reported more GI symptoms than those with an ASM of < 2 (median; IQR: 6.5; 3-11 vs 3; 1-7, p = 0.002). V women with ASM > 5 reported significantly more GI symptoms than control women with ASM < 5 (median; IQR: 6; 4-8 vs 4.5; 2-8, p < 0.001).

Conclusions: In abused "nonpatient" women, the combination of physical and sexual abuse, childhood and adulthood abuse and higher severity scores were associated with a greater number of GI symptoms, irrespective of the social and economic setting.