Previously submitted to: JMIR Formative Research (no longer under consideration since Dec 06, 2022)
Date Submitted: May 17, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Multimodal treatment for sexual abuse survivors: Mixed-methods results indicate benefits for children and caregivers
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a key health area that needs new and innovative treatment options for both caregivers and children. Although there are few existing treatment options for the CSA survivors, there have been studies targeting inventions for children’s mental health issues as well as for caregiver-child dyads. For CSA survivors, there is some recent evidence for the effectiveness of multimodal treatment. However, no prior study has identified long term findings over the full year of programming in a multimodal program and there has been no analysis of the role of caregivers in treatment outcomes.
Objective:
Objective:
The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a complex multimodal treatment program for child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors. The secondary aim was to qualitatively evaluate the attitudes and opinions of caregivers.
Methods:
Methods:
Children (CSA survivors) completed quantitative self-report surveys before and after each of the four treatment rounds in a comprehensive year long program (n=15). 86.7% identified as female and 13.3% identified as transgender (mean age 10.2 ± 1.6). Measures included validated self-report surveys related to anxiety, depression, PTSD, quality of life, and self-esteem. Changes in mean outcome scores were analyzed for statistical significance. Caregivers of CSA survivors participated in two innovative hybrid webinar focus groups with staff at a residential treatment facility (n=11). Sessions were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed.
Results:
Results:
For CSA survivors, statistically significant improvements were observed on PTSD, depression, anxiety, and quality of life. For caregivers of CSA survivors, 20 participants contributed to the data and three themes arose from our thematic analysis: (1) Challenges of starting and maintaining treatment, (2) Therapeutic benefits of specialized treatment, and (3) Barriers and facilitators of treatment.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
The present mixed methods study supports effectiveness of a complex multimodal program designed for CSA survivors in terms of improving children’s mental health outcomes as well as supporting caregiver well-being. Future studies are warranted with a larger sample size to replicate these preliminary long-term findings. Several benefits and gaps in wellness support arose during our thematic analysis.
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