Body satisfaction, eating disorders and suicide ideation in an Internet sample of self-harmers reporting and not reporting childhood sexual abuse.

This study examined differences between self-harmers who had and who had not been sexually abused in childhood with regards to other risk factors and associated behaviours commonly identified in the research literature as being related to self-harm. Participants (N = 113, mean age = 19.92 years) were recruited via self-harm Internet discussion groups and message boards, and completed a web questionnaire assessing measures of body satisfaction, eating disorders, childhood trauma and suicide ideation. Self-harmers who reported a history of childhood sexual abuse scored higher on measures of body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, suicide ideation, physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect. These findings implicate sexual abuse as a powerful traumatic event that can have severe repercussions on an individual, not only in terms of self-harming behaviour but also in terms of developing a wide range of maladaptive behaviours in conjunction with self-harm.

Dissociational body experiences: differences between respondents with and without prior out-of-body-experiences.

Many people report having had an experience in which they felt as if their phenomenal self was separated in Cartesian space from their physical body. This phenomenon is often referred to as an 'out-of-body' (OBE) experience. Prior work has found OBE experients to score higher on measures of dissociation and to differ in regards to the perceptual experience of their body. Based upon this work, we theorized that the daily bodily experiences of people with and without a prior OBE would differ along a number of dimensions. In order to test this theory a questionnaire study was conducted. Of 243 respondents, 62 reported at least one prior OBE. Six scales on different aspects of bodily experience were administered. Respondents reporting a previous OBE were found to score significantly higher on measures of somatoform dissociation, self-consciousness, body dissatisfaction, and lower on a measure of confidence in their physical self-presentation than respondents without a previous OBE. The findings are discussed as supporting a dissociational theory of the OBE.

The out-of-body experience and body image: differences between experiments and nonexperiments.

The present study sought to examine various aspects of body image for persons reporting a previous out-of-body experience (OBE). A total of 64 people took part in the study, 34 of whom had had an OBE. Participants reporting a previous OBE were found to score significantly higher on measures of body dissatisfaction, social physique anxiety, and somatoform dissociation, and lower on a measure of physical self-presentation. OBE experiments also reported lower levels of body awareness during use of an immersive virtual reality system than nonexperiments.