Abstract
Suffering traumatic experiences linked to violence seems to be related to suicide attempts, especially, when the physical or sexual abuse has been experienced at an early age. This study examines the relationship between the history of abuse and suicide attempts among women victims of violence living in poverty in Nicaragua. This sample was subjected to a particularly serious range of stressful situations and experiences related to violence throughout their lives. The results show that women who experienced abuse during childhood were more likely to report a history of suicide attempts than women without a history of childhood abuse. Therefore, suicide attempts seem to be related more to those traumatic experiences during childhood than to violence suffered afterward. Identifying this type of abuse is particularly important because of its implications for the victims’ health, as suicide attempts are maladaptive behaviors with which the women in the sample could have been addressing the trauma they experienced in their childhood. It is, therefore, necessary to highlight this problem in a developing country, which has been the focus of a limited number of studies, and where there are no support mechanisms for victims whose rights have been violated.