Mental health in adolescent survivors of child sexual abuse a quasi experimental research with rational emotive behaviour therapy

Abstract

The psychological aftermath of CSA is long-term and needs actionable intervention to prevent it from taking strong roots. The current study has attempted to formulate an intervention based on REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) to reduce the intensity of symptoms in four different mental health disorders identified among adolescent survivors of CSA and tried to validate the efficacy of the intervention through both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The researcher worked with Juvenile Care Institutions associated with Childline to work with the adolescent survivors of CSA. Considering the ethical and legal components to conduct the research, she identified 58 survivors and allocated them to the experimental and control groups through randomization. The researcher administered four different scales Kutchers Adolescent Depression scale-11 items, Spence Children Anxiety Scale, Impact Event Scale-Revised, and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale to measure four mental health disorders namely Depression, Anxiety, PTSD and Social Phobia. The data underwent several statistical treatments such as descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon Rank Test for quantitative analysis. Braun and Clarke s six-step thematic analysis was applied for qualitative analysis. The effect size was identified using Cohen s D, and the Reliable Change Index was checked to understand if the change of scores between the participants scores pre and post the intervention is statistically significant. The results show that there has been considerable improvement with each mental health disorder that was measured in the participants and there have been observable changes in the thought patterns among the participants. Several confounding/ extraneous variables such as the environment in the institutions, peer relationships, physical illness have also affected the study and the results. Future studies may include longitudinal studies, phenomenological research frameworks and inclusion of all genders in the study. newline