Seventy women enrolled in an outpatient clinic were asked, in structured clinical interviews at two times, about childhood histories of physical and sexual abuse. Test-retest reliability yielded a Kappa of .63 for the measure of physical abuse, and .82 for the measure of sexual abuse. Validity, assessed as consistency with an independent clinical assessment, showed 75 percent agreement for reports of physical abuse, and 93 percent agreement for reports of sexual abuse. The authors recommend collecting information about a wide range of events so that varying case definitions might be generated from the data. For example, analysis can be adjusted to include in the definition of physical abuse only events of being hit with an object or worse, which will eliminate many threshold cases, and improve the reliability and validity. In conclusion, the authors consider that childhood histories of physical and sexual abuse can be reliably and validly assessed in women with severe and persistent mental illness using a standardized instrument. References, appendixes