Rape treatment outcome research: Empirical findings and state of the literature

Abstract

This article reviews empirical support for treatments targeting women sexually assaulted during adolescence or adulthood. Thirty-two articles were located using data from 20 separate samples. Of the 20 samples, 12 targeted victims with chronic symptoms, three focused on the acute period postassault, two included women with chronic and acute symptoms, and three were secondary prevention programs. The majority of studies focus on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and/ or anxiety as treatment targets. Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure have garnered the most support with this population. Stress Inoculation Training and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing also show some efficacy. Of the four studies that compared active treatments, few differences were found. Overall, cognitive behavioral interventions lead to better PTSD outcomes than supportive counseling does. However, even in the strongest treatments more than one-third of women retain a PTSD diagnosis at post-treatment or drop out of treatment. Discussion highlights the paucity of research in this area, methodological limitations of examined studies, generalizability of findings, and important directions for future research at various stages of trauma recovery. Keywords sexual assault; rape; efficacy; treatment outcome; posttraumatic stress disorder; PTSD One in six women (17.6%) will be raped or experience an attempted rape during her lifetime (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2006), equaling more than 17.7 million raped women in the United States. Rape is a particularly harmful victimization experience in terms of negative consequences for health and post-assault functioning (Resnick, Kilpatrick, Dansky, Saunders, & Best, 1993). In a national study, raped women had a 6.2 times higher rate of lifetime Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than non-victims of crime, with approximately one third of raped women meeting criteria. Therefore, 3.8 million women are estimated to have had raped-related PTSD and more than 1.3 million currently have PTSD (Kilpatrick, Edmunds, & Seymour, 1992). These numbers highlight the large number of sexually assaulted women in need of effective treatment. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptClin Psychol Rev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 July 1. Published in final edited form as:Clin Psychol Rev. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThis article reviews treatment outcome data for women sexually assaulted during adolescence or adulthood. Sample selection criteria an...

Factores de Vulnerabilidad y de Protección del Impacto Emocional en Mujeres Adultas Víctimas de Agresiones Sexuales

“…Se trata, por tanto, de una muestra amplia de mujeres jó-venes (en torno a 25-30 años) que presentaban un malestar emocional crónico que desbordaba sus recursos psicológicos de afrontamiento y que interfería negativamente en su vida cotidiana, tal y como se muestra también en otros trabajos (Cortés et al, 2011;Fergusson et al, 2008;Vickerman y Margolin, 2009).…”

“…De hecho, cerca de un 15% de la población femenina sufre alguna agresión sexual a lo largo de su vida (Campbell y Wasco, 2005;Vickerman y Margolin, 2009). Asimismo, según un reciente meta-análisis de Pereda, Guilera, Forns y Gómez-Benito (2009), la tasa de prevalencia de algún tipo de abuso sexual en menores en la población general de diversos países es de un 7.4% en el caso de los niños y de un 19.2% en el de las niñas.…”

A review of the transportability of cognitive therapy for the treatment of PTSD among South African rape survivors

“…those characterised by the presence of trained clinicians and with client populations that do not present with co-morbid diagnoses). A detailed discussion of each of these clinical trials is beyond the scope of this paper (see Foa et al, 2008;Vickerman & Margolin, 2009 for a more complete description of these studies).…”

“…Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/hsa g/ de faul t.asp In treating PTSD following rape, the majority of interventions with evidence of efficacy are cognitivebehavioural treatments (Edwards, 2013;Foa, Keane, Friedman, & Cohen, 2008;Vickerman & Margolin, 2009;Wilson, Friedman, & Lindy, 2012). Some of the existing protocols (e.g.…”

“…Stress Inoculation Training) have been adapted for the treatment of rape survivors while others such as prolonged exposure therapy (PET) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) were specifically developed for this population group. Other cognitive therapy (CT) treatments that have been used with rape survivors and found to be effective include Ehlers and Clark (2000) Cognitive Therapy (ECCT) and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) (Foa et al, 2008;Ford & Courtois, 2009;Vickerman & Margolin, 2009). These treatments typically have a number of common components (Schnyder et al, 2015) namely psychoeducation about PTSD and the impact of traumatic events, exposure therapy aimed at facilitating processing of the trauma memory and cognitive restructuring of problematic cognitive appraisals associated with the trauma and its sequelae.…”