Episodically homeless women with serious mental illness: prevalence of physical and sexual assault

Abstract

Three aspects of physical and sexual assault in the histories of 99 episodically homeless, seriously mentally ill women were assessed: lifetime prevalence; severity, co-occurrence, and recency; and associations between levels of this victimization and specific characteristics of the women. Results indicate that the life-time risk for violent victimization was so high (97%) as to amount to normative experiences for this population.