The relationship between childhood abuse and psychosis for women prisoners: Assessing the importance of frequency and type of victimization.

This study examines the relationship between childhood victimization and self-reported current symptoms of psychosis in an incarcerated female population in the United States. Participants are 159 randomly selected women incarcerated in two North Carolina state prisons. Participants completed a battery of self-report measures to assess childhood victimization and current and lifetime experience of audio/visual hallucinations and delusions. In accordance with the dose–response model, we hypothesized a predictive relationship between severity, frequency, and type of victimization and psychosis for this sample of women prisoners.