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Sexual Victimization in Women With Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder. J.-M. Darvez-Bornoz, T. Lemperiere, A. Degiovanni, P. Grillard. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 30:78-84, 1995.

Importance:  The incidence of rape among adult women with schizophrenia was almost 3 times higher and among adult women with bipolar disorder 2 times higher than among the general population. Among those with schizophrenia, the majority had been raped multiple times, and rape was associated with being more severely mentally ill.

Summary:  In France, 64 women with schizophrenia and 26 women with bipolar disorder were carefully questioned regarding their sexual histories. A total of 14 (22 percent) of the women with schizophrenia and 4 (15 percent) of the women with bipolar disorder had been raped as adults, compared with a rate of 8 percent in the general population. Nine of the 14 women with schizophrenia who had been raped had been raped multiple times. According to the authors, the women with schizophrenia who had been raped "belonged mainly to the group of schizophrenics with the longest duration of hospitalization, that is to say, probably to the most chronically and severely ill group."

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