El efecto del abuso infantil en el funcionamiento social de los trastornos del espectro esquizofrénico.

Abstract

Child abuse has become a public health problem and society is more aware of its prevalence. Science puts more energy and resources to understand the consequences of child abuse, as well as studying what role this phenomenon plays in the etiology and symptomatic expression of different psychiatric disorders. The main objective of this thesis is to explore the role of child abuse in the dysfunction of social functioning in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Three studies were carried out to achieve this objective: 1. A systematic review in which the current literature on the effect of child sexual abuse on social functioning in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders was evaluated; 2. A cross-sectional study in which the effect of child sexual abuse on the social functioning of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders was studied; and 3. A cross-sectional study analyzing the effect of child abuse in general, as well as the different types of childhood abuse, in the social functioning of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The effect of polytraumatization was also evaluated to study the phenomenon in more detail. The results of the first study showed that, with the current literature, the relevance of the influence of child sexual abuse on the disfunction of social functioning in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders decreases with respect to what has been considered to date. In the second article, it was shown that child sexual abuse reduced the overall quality of life of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, as well as a reduction in levels of adaptation to roles. Finally, the third article highlighted the importance of emotional neglect in the deterioration of social functioning. It was shown that this type of neglect increases the deficit in social functioning on both men and women. On the other hand, physical neglect and emotional abuse, as well as suffering child abuse in general, decreased social functioning only in women. Neither physical nor sexual abuse, as well as polytraumatization, did not show an effect in this type of symptomatology of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Date of Award	12 Nov 2018
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Jordi Obiols Llandrich (Director) & Jose Blas Navarro Pastor (Co-director)