The comparison of self-concept and childhood traumas of people with sexual addiction disorder with healthy people

Sexual addiction is a psychiatric disorder with unpleasant personal, interpersonal, legal, social, and physical outcomes. Sexual addiction is mainly rooted in unpleasant experiences within family and during childhood. The purpose of this study was to investigate comparison of self-concept and childhood traumas of people with sexual addiction disorder with healthy people.

This study was a causal-comparative investigation and using purposive sampling method, was carried out on 50 people with sexual addiction disorder and 50 healthy people in the control group matching with age and academic. The study made use of the sexual addiction screening test-revised (SAST-R) of Carnes and et al, self-concept questionnaire (SCQ) of Rogers and short form of the childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ-SF) of Bernstein and et al. In this study, Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used for data analysis.

The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed that there is a difference between self-concept and childhood traumas of people with sexual addiction disorder with healthy people; in this way, the people with sexual addiction disorder have lower scores in negative self-concept and childhood traumas than the healthy people.

These results have important implications of the role of unpleasant experiences in the family on the sexual behaviors of people in the later years of life. So that those who have negative self-concept and more childhood trauma are more to sexual addiction disorder.