Young adult women who report childhood intrafamilial sexual abuse: subsequent adjustment.

Young adult women who had experienced incest and a matched comparison group were examined for differences in interpersonal functioning, sexual functioning, self-esteem, and emotional adjustment. Those reporting incest reported significantly poorer general social adjustment, especially in dating relationships. They had significantly lower levels of sexual satisfaction, lower self-esteem, and distorted body images, as well as greater depression and lower positive affect. These characteristics may be related not only to the incest experience but to the general family environment in which incest occurred, as significant differences in family characteristics were also observed.

The Modified Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression: reliability and validity.

While the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) has been the standard instrument for the assessment of the severity of depression for many years, this scale has a number of limitations. We developed the Modified Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (MHRSD) to overcome some of these limitations and to enable paraprofessional research assistants to make reliable and valid assessments of depressive symptoms. The present study investigates the reliability and validity of the MHRSD. Interrater reliability among paraprofessional research assistants was excellent. The relationship between the MHRSD and expert clinician ratings on the MHRSD and the original HRSD was also high. Thus, the MHRSD appears to be a useful addition to the clinical researcher's assessment battery.

Psychosocial characteristics of applicants evaluated for surgical gender reassignment.

Social, sexual, economic, familial, and psychological characteristics of 764 applicants for surgical gender reassignment, 479 males and 285 females, who completed the application questionnaire and were subsequently interviewed by the Gender Dysphoria Program in Palo Alto, California, are examined. All information except diagnosis was obtained from the applicants' responses to a standardized 100-item questionnaire. Diagnosis was determined by a psychiatrist after a 1 1/2-hour interview. A comparison of male applicants to female applicants indicated differences in five areas: (1) sexual history; (2) acting-out behavior or sociopathy; (3) work history; (4) strategies for physically passing in the desired gender, e.g., hormone therapy; and (5) diagnosis. Females had experienced more stable same-sex sexual relationships and fewer opposite-sex sexual relationships than the males had experienced. The females exhibited less acting-out behavior, indicated by few criminal convictions and little involvement in prostitution, compared to the male applicants. Twice as many males as females were unemployed and receiving welfare at the time of application. In addition, males used cosmetic surgery and hormone therapy more frequently to facilitate physically passing in the desired gender than did the females. The most frequent diagnosis for males was transvestitism, while for the females it was classic transsexualism.