Trauma-related emotions and radical acceptance in dialectical behavior therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder after childhood sexual abuse

  • Background: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) related to childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is often associated with a wide range of trauma-related aversive emotions such as fear, disgust, sadness, shame, guilt, and anger. Intense experience of aversive emotions in particular has been linked to higher psychopathology in trauma survivors. Most established psychosocial treatments aim to reduce avoidance of trauma-related memories and associated emotions. Interventions based on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) also foster radical acceptance of the traumatic event. Methods: This study compares individual ratings of trauma-related emotions and radical acceptance between the start and the end of DBT for PTSD (DBT-PTSD) related to CSA. We expected a decrease in trauma-related emotions and an increase in acceptance. In addition, we tested whether therapy response according to the Clinician Administered PTSD-Scale (CAPS) for the DSM-IV was associated with changes in trauma-related emotions and acceptance. The data was collected within a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of DBT-PTSD, and a subsample of 23 women was included in this secondary data analysis. Results: In a multilevel model, shame, guilt, disgust, distress, and fear decreased significantly from the start to the end of the therapy whereas radical acceptance increased. Therapy response measured with the CAPS was associated with change in trauma-related emotions. Conclusions: Trauma-related emotions and radical acceptance showed significant changes from the start to the end of DBT-PTSD. Future studies with larger sample sizes and control group designs are needed to test whether these changes are due to the treatment. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00481000

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Author:Nora GörgORCiD, Kathlen Priebe, Jan R. Böhnke, Regina SteilORCiDGND, Anne Sibilla Dyer, Nikolaus Kleindienst
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-457813
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-017-0065-5
ISSN:2051-6673
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28717512
Parent Title (English):Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation
Publisher:BioMed Central
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2017
Date of first Publication:2017/07/13
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2018/03/01
Tag:Dialectical behavior therapy; Exposure therapy; Posttraumatic stress disorder
Volume:4
Issue:Art. 15
Page Number:12
First Page:1
Last Page:12
Note:
Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
HeBIS-PPN:431861617
Institutes:Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften / Psychologie
Dewey Decimal Classification:1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0