| Sumario: | Persons with a history of sexual assault seek more health care than do others. The present study explored whether this difference is due to poorer health or a unique pattern of illness behavior among assaulted persons. Interviews were conducted with 6125 randomly selected residents of two communities. Data were disaggregated into over-lapping subsets of persons who reported each of 21 symptoms (e.g., abdominal pain, nausea, chest pain, palpitations, headache, back pain). Assaulted and non-assaulted persons were equally likely to seek medical care for 18 of the 21 symptoms. Among those who sought care, assault was not related to whether symptoms were medically explained. Taken together, the results suggest that associations of sexual assault with medical care seeking are largely due to poorer health of assaulted persons.
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