Mental Health Services for Rape Survivors Current Issues in Therapeutic Practice

This paper reviews three critical issues for mental health practitioners working with rape survivors. First, current research suggests that victims experience a variety of negative mental health effects from sexual assault, including, but not limited to, post-traumatic stress symptoms. In addition, rape survivors may be struggling with how family and friends are reacting to the assault and may be coping with secondary victimization experiences they encountered in post-rape help seeking. Mental health practitioners must be aware of the wide variety of issues rape survivors may present in therapy. Victims may need to process not only the rape itself, but also post-rape experiences with their informal and formal support providers. Second, empirical evaluations of therapeutic techniques suggest that cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) can be effective in reducing shortterm post-rape fear and anxiety symptoms. Feminist therapies tend to focus on survivors' longerterm problems with guilt and self-blame. Although more evaluation research is needed, available data suggest feminist therapy may be an effective approach as well. Finally, it is not uncommon that mental health practitioners who work with rape survivors experience distressing emotions similar to those of the survivors. These symptoms are called secondary traumatic stress (STS), compassion fatigue (CF), or vicarious traumatization (VT). STS/CF/VT is more common among therapists with higher caseloads of sexually traumatized clients. Self care strategies are particularly important for therapists engaged in this kind of work.