Psychological Well-being among the Adolescents who have Experienced and who have not Experienced Sexual Abuse

Adolescence is the stage where important psychosocial changes and development takes place. An individual's experience as a child or an adolescent contributes to her identity development. Those experiences can be pleasant or unpleasant, tragic or unimportant. One of the tragic experiences that an individual can experience in life time as early as adolescence or child hood is sexual abuse. The present study aimed at understanding the level of psychological well being among adolescents who have experienced sexual abuse and adolescents who have not experienced sexual abuse, the study is exploratory in nature. The sample for the study included 91 college going females of the age range from 15 to 18 years. Out of 91 participants 41 had the experience of some kind of contact sexual abuse and 51 adolescents did not have any experience of sexual abuse. Psychological well being scale developed by Carol Ryff (1995) was employed to assess the level of psychological well being among the participants. The results of the study analyzed using independent samples t test revealed the significant difference between the two groups in the areas of environmental mastery, positive relationship with others, purpose in life and self acceptance. Mean scores indicated that adolescents with no experience of sexual abuse had significantly higher environmental mastery, positive relationship with others, purpose in life and self acceptance compared to adolescents with the experience of sexual abuse. In the areas of autonomy, and personal growth no significant difference was observed between the two groups. The present study indicates that adolescents who have experienced sexual abuse face significant difficulty in accepting one's own qualities and is disappointed with their past experience where as adolescents with no experience of sexual abuse feel there is meaning to their present and past life, and make effective use of surrounding opportunities. Overall results of the study provide insight about the significant impact of sexual abuse on the psychological well being among adolescents.