Chronic illnesses often involve repeated hospitalization and invasive
treatment procedures that can have a traumatic impact on child
development. To explore possible consequences of treatment procedures,
three groups of patients with congenital anomalies were examined
longitudinally. At first admission, adolescents (ages 10–20, mean
15) with anorectal anomalies (n = 14), adolescents with
Hirschsprung disease (n = 14), and hospitalized controls
(n = 14) were assessed for treatment procedures, somatic
function, mental health, and dissociative experiences. The assessment
included the Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale (A-DES). At 10-year
follow-up, the patients completed the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES)
and the Somatoform Dissociative Questionnaire (SDQ-20). Anal dilatation,
an invasive medical treatment procedure performed daily by the parents the
first 4 years, was correlated with the frequency and severity of
persisting dissociative symptomatology. The procedure was the only
significant predictor of A-DES and SDQ-20 scores, and one of two
significant predictors of DES scores. This “experiment of
nature” permitted a specific and unique opportunity to examine the
impact of early traumatic exposure on child development in the absence of
parental malevolence, and on later dissociative outcome in adolescence and
adulthood. The findings might be valuable theoretically to our
understanding of the development of psychopathology, and may lend itself
for comparison with data on sexually abused children.