Going off of my last post, the most common physical symptom of sexual assault appears to be weight gain. This happens for a number of reasons, one reason for weight gain is that the survivor no longer wants to appear attractive, they are using their fat as a literal protective layer against themselves and society. This decision may be conscious or may be subconscious. A second reason is that they use food as a coping mechanism, something that they can control. For these women, food is not something that they consume in order to live, food is what is necessary for them to survive, to help them cope with past trauma.
Something else that is a common theme in these articles is when the sexual assault happened, most people of these studies concern childhood abuse instead of abuse in general. Childhood abuse can also lead to multiple health problems such as early puberty which can occur when women are raped at a young age.
The reason this article was written was to help healthcare professionals know some potential causes for their patients situation. For example, if a doctor was treating someone for obesity, they would know to take it from a different perspective, to ask about childhood history. They would need to take a more psychiatric approach to their treatment in order for it to be successful in the long term. Many women can lose weight in programs, if their mental health problems go untreated and they are assaulted again or sexually harassed they can easily fall back into bad habits.
It is important to understand, not only the mental side effects of assault, but the physical ones as well. We cannot simply cure someones physical ailment if it is interconnected to their mental health. I think this is a problem in our current medical field, the lack of attention paid to the connections of the mind and body.
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=HRCA&u=gree96177&id=GALE|A14583916&v=2.1&it=r&sid=summon
-Chelsea Cullen