Introduction

Various long-term psychological consequences are associated with sexual abuse in children; these include suicide, depression, increased revictimization, substance abuse and affective instability (Rubia, 2012). Those exposed to these abuses at developmental stages always exhibit different outcomes. For instance, those in pre-school show somatic complaints, reports of more medical consultation and sleep problems, some may report emotion regulation deficits that are associated with these abuses (Bernier et al. 2013), those exposed at adolescent age usually develop suicidal ideations, difficulty in romantic relationships, frequent intimate partner violence (Brabant et al. 2013). These results indicate that exposure to sexual abuse determines the psychological reparations that one faces later in his/her life.

When one experiences these at an early age, the traumatic experience he/she undergoes alters the dendritic and axonal morphologies and thus eliminate synapses, consequently resulting in the reduction in the brain volume and grey matter loss (Sheffield et al. 2013); eventually, these lead to the pre-cursors of the brain disorders. This article aims to bring the linkage between sexual abuse on children and their challenges at different ages of their development.

Methods

PubMed, Francis, Taylor and WorldCat’s online literature from 2010 to 2017 was done using the following search terms, child abuse, child maltreatment, and sexual abuse. Other terms, such as trauma and structural brain changes, were used during the searching process. These were used in the publication fields and sites.

Review of the Literature.

As early as the year 2000, studies concerning the traumatic experiences that are associated with brain volume and changes in grey matter as a result of sexual abuse have been reported, according to (Gold et al. 2016), the reduction of the cortical thickness in the brain region is involved in the emotional processing and grey matter loss in the visual, prefrontal cortex and the hypothalamus, these are related to one another thus leading to the development of psychiatric conditions later in life.

Some research studies suggest that sexual abuse plays a major role in the development of the brain compared to the other forms of childhood maltreatment. An illustration of tis has been made by (Sheffield et al. 2013) comparing the psychotic patients that have no history of sexual abuse, and it was discovered that psychotic patient who have experienced sexual abuse before displayed am important global reduction in grey matter volume as compared to both the healthy controls and the psychotic patients without sexual abuse. An existing linkage between the limbic system and child maltreatment has been covered. A consensus that child maltreatment plays a significant role in the structural deficit was seen to connect with the limbic system (Hart and Rubia, 2012). However, environmental effects remain unclear.

The amygdala plays an important role during the processing of emotions, regulation of behaviour and fear conditions (Morey et al. 2016); it was also found that a youth that has got no posttraumatic stress disorder demonstrates a larger left amygdala and the right hippocampal volumes as compared to the maltreated youth that has posttraumatic stress disorder, these results show that childhood traumatic exposures usually affect the limbic regions of the brain.

Recommendations.

It is recommended that a large measure of parameters should be used when examining the structural changes that occur in the brain that are associated with sexual abuse. For instance, Gold et al. (2016) have demonstrated that volumetric atrophy found in the bran is concurrent with several psychiatric disorders that make it highly difficult to differentiate the effects of trauma, such as positron emission tomography scans and voxel-based morphology have been used when measuring the brain. Therefore, future studies should try to examine other brain structures such as the corpus callosum, insula, and cerebellum.

Conclusion.

The integration of neuroscience studies and the occurrence of sexual abuse helps uncover the techniques through which sexual abuse during childhood may put an individual at higher risk of developing mental and psychological difficulties. The biomarkers can help through the production of accurate prognostic devices that can monitor the progress and the recovery process of sexual abuse among children.