The Dark Cartoon: Intrusive Imagery Secondary to Childhood Sexual Abuse

We report on the case of a middle-aged woman with a complex psychiatric history in whom atypical intrusive imagery identified in the mental status examination appeared to represent an emergence of childhood dissociative phenomena. These new symptoms led to the reappraisal of her clinical presentation and a diagnostic re-evaluation that they represented a re-emergence of childhood post-traumatic stress disorder secondary to sexual abuse. We discuss the phenomenology identified in our patient with the aim of increasing awareness of unusual symptoms in adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse and the importance of the mental state examination in eliciting and classifying such phenomena.