The Effectiveness of Psychological Interventions for Women Traumatized by Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Women traumatized by sexual abuse as children or adults experience psychological disorders, such as post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and social adjustment. The published research includes a broad array of studies on psychological interventions intended to ease their symptoms. This study systematically examined the specific effects of psychological interventions for women traumatized by sexual abuse and statistically evaluated interventions by calculating effect sizes in a meta-analysis. A literature search was conducted of electronic databases of journals, gray literature and Clinical Research Information Service. Medical Subject Heading terminology, text words, and logical operators were applied, and 2,029 articles published in English or Korean were retrieved. Inclusion criteria were full-text articles on randomized controlled trials in which: (1) the subjects were women 18 years or older who had been sexually assaulted or raped; (2) all types of exclusively psychological treatment were used; (3) comparisons were mediated or routinely managed without psychosomatic treatment; (4) interventions did not target patients with chronic mental illnesses or neurocognitive dysfunctions; and (5) the studies were not on animals, empirical research, cohorts, research protocols, or integrated literature reviews. Ten articles fully met the inclusion criteria. The main findings were: (1) interventions had long-term effects on post-traumatic stress reduction, (2) effects on depression were effective only 3 months post-intervention, and (3) there were no follow-up effects on anxiety reduction or social adjustment improvement. The types of therapeutic intervention, delivery mode, number and duration of sessions, and number of weeks varied.