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The Long Term Effectiveness Of Prolonged Exposure Therapy

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Existing controlled examinations of intervention efficacy specific to only sexual assault and rape are presently minimal in comparison to intervention examinations of combination or other types of trauma (Regehr, Alaggia, Dennis, Pitts, & Saini, 2013). Psychotherapeutic interventions that fail to differentiate sexual assault and rape victims from other types of trauma victims may decrease the treatment effectiveness or inadvertently harm participants in this subgroup. Trauma associated from rape or sexual assault differ from other forms of trauma; treatment efficacy should be examined once this matter has been taken into consideration. Specifically, trauma associated from rape or sexual assault entail symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal ideations and sexual dysfunction. Individuals may also indicate feelings of vulnerability, loss of control, fear, shame, self-blame, societal blame and stigma (Russell & Davis, 2007; Regehr et al., 2013; Ullman & Peter-Hagene, 2014). This research proposal intends to explore the long term effectiveness of Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) at reducing distress and trauma explicitly for adult victims of sexual assault and rape.
Prolonged exposure (PE) is a specific exposure therapy program that derives from Emotional Processing Theory (EPT). The idea of emotional processing is to interpret realistic information and accommodate that information into a fear structure which in turn diminishes the fear (Foa, 2011).

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