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Narrative quality and disturbance pre‐ and post‐emotion‐focused therapy for child abuse trauma
Author(s) -
Mundorf Elisabeth S.,
Paivio Sandra C.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of traumatic stress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.259
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1573-6598
pISSN - 0894-9867
DOI - 10.1002/jts.20707
Subject(s) - narrative , childhood abuse , psychology , disturbance (geology) , clinical psychology , child abuse , psychotherapist , poison control , suicide prevention , medicine , medical emergency , art , paleontology , literature , biology
This study predicted that the quality of trauma narratives written before and following emotion‐focused therapy for child abuse trauma would be positively associated with psychological disturbance before and following therapy. Narratives for 37 clients were coded for emotion words, temporal orientation, incoherence, and depth of experiencing. At pretreatment, negative emotion words and experiencing were correlated with abuse resolution, r (35) = −.36, and r (35) = −.34, respectively. At posttreatment, narrative incoherence was correlated with trauma symptoms, r (35) = .33, whereas present–future orientation and experiencing were correlated with abuse resolution, r (35) = −.37, and r (35) = −.31, respectively. Pretreatment incoherence was associated with posttreatment trauma symptoms, r (35) = .42, and pretreatment depth of experiencing was associated with posttreatment abuse resolution, r (35) = −.37. Results support narrative quality as an index of trauma disturbance.