Revelations about Jimmy Savile have provided alarming evidence of children suffering abuse in health-care settings.

But further down the line, often years later, are health services still failing people who have been abused?

A conference next week, and a new booklet, will examine the experiences of patients. Volumes have been written on the mental health effects of childhood sexual abuse: in contrast physical ill health is often ignored.

"I overheard doctors in hospital saying, 'She's got mental health problems, I don't know if there's anything wrong with her or not,'" as one patient recalls. "When they find out you've been abused, they think it's all in your head," another complains. Yet two of Scotland's major support agencies – Open Secret and Kingdom Abuse Survivors' Project (KASP) – find a remarkable four in five of their clients have significant health problems, often very disabling in their daily lives.

Now Open Secret is hosting a conference in Stirling next Thursday, highlighting the links between childhood trauma and chronic physical health problems.

It will also launch Surviving Well? a booklet for GPs and other health professionals. In it, survivors from Open Secret and KASP give their often unhappy personal experiences of health care. Calling for change, they plead: "What do we want? To be listened to, and not to be judged."

The booklet was put together by three groups from Open Secret's pioneering physical health groupwork project, and by interviews with survivors from KASP. Extraordinary levels of ill health emerged – a snapshot which should surely trigger further surveys among adult survivors in Scotland, and a much higher priority for their health needs.

In both men and women irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other bowel disorders, chronic pain in many parts of the body, urinary infections, back and hip disorders, and breathing problems were common. Most women had gynaecological problems such as fibroids, pelvic inflammatory disease or womb prolapse and one in four had a hysterectomy. Other conditions included ulcerative colitis, chronic migraines, arthritis, kidney infections and chronic fatigue.

The men's conditions included temporomandibular disorder (acute chronic joint pain); chronic fatigue, chronic ear and kidney infections, epilepsy and environmental sensitivity.

Most survivors are unable to do paid work despite wanting to do so and have to rely on benefits.

There are several reasons why sexual abuse survivors often have bad health. These can include the neuro-biological effects of severe early trauma which make people especially vulnerable to auto-immune diseases and fatigue; effects on the body of repeated violence and brutality; the effects of unhealthy life choices such as alcohol, drugs or "comfort eating" to blot out their traumatic symptoms; the side-effects of psychiatric drugs; and fearful avoidance of health checks that trigger memories of their abuse.

But we still don't have all the answers, and survivors have too rarely been consulted for clues.

An over-simplistic view, without checking, that stress must be the only cause of their pain or illness emerged overwhelmingly as the survivors' biggest grievance. Often treated as hypochondriacs or "poor needy creatures", they were told things like: "I don't want to hear about your musculoskeletal problems, I want to know why you're really here."

In the booklet survivors describe what they want from health professionals to create safe health settings, to deal sensitively with abuse histories, help them recover and gain control over their own health.

Yet again empathy, warmth, respect and understanding emerged as much more important than lengthy qualifications (what we all want, surely, from our health professionals). And survivors didn't care if GPs or nurses admit they still had much to learn. As one male survivor recalled, courage and commitment to try to help is what matters. He said of a health professional: "I think she at first felt, 'This (child abuse) is outside my league', but she learned more about it and didn't say, 'Go away and talk to someone else – instead of me.'"

The conference, which will include research contributions from Professor Peter Davey and me, will also consider survivors' feedback from complementary therapies, and problems with multiple medications.

Open Secret and KASP hope closer long-term relationships with health services will result from the day.

Dr Sarah Nelson is a researcher specialising in childhood abuse and its effects, based at Edinburgh University.

Open Secret's conference, More than Medicine?, is at Stirling's Family Life Centre on October 25. A few places are left. Call 01324 630100.