Breadcrumbs

Controlled Trial of Psychotherapy for Congolese Survivors of Sexual Violence

Authored by: Judith K. Bass, Jeannie Annan, Sarah McIvor Murray, et al.

Categories: Humanitarian Emergencies
Sub-Categories: Mass Atrocities, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV)
Country: Democratic Republic of Congo
Region: Sub-Saharan Africa
Year: 2013
Citation: Bass, Judith K, Jeannie Annan, Sarah McIvor Murray, et al. "Controlled Trial of Psychotherapy for Congolese Survivors of Sexual Violence." New England Journal of Medicine 368 (2013): 2182-2191.

Access the Resource:

Abstract

In this trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we randomly assigned 16 villages to provide cognitive processing therapy (1 individual session and 11 group sessions) or individual support to female sexual-violence survivors with high levels of PTSD symptoms and combined depression and anxiety symptoms. One village was excluded owing to concern about the competency of the psychosocial assistant, resulting in 7 villages that provided therapy (157 women) and 8 villages that provided individual support (248 women). Assessments of combined depression and anxiety symptoms (average score on the Hopkins Symptom Checklist [range, 0 to 3, with higher scores indicating worse symptoms]), PTSD symptoms (average score on the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire [range, 0 to 3, with higher scores indicating worse symptoms]), and functional impairment (average score across 20 tasks [range, 0 to 4, with higher scores indicating greater impairment]) were performed at baseline, at the end of treatment, and 6 months after treatment ended.