Effective support for victims of sexual violence: A systematic review of reviews

Abstract

In response to the growing body of research on the effectiveness of support for sexual violence victims, numerous reviews have been conducted to synthesise the treatment outcome literature. However, these reviews have also become unmanageable in number and vary in scope or quality, which would make it difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of a specific type of support or intervention. Conducting a ‘review of reviews’ is the next logical step as a way to condense and identify pertinent findings from a large pool of empirical studies. This report brings together reviews of treatment outcomes for child and adult victims of sexual violence. For child victims, trauma-focused CBT in combination with supportive and psychodynamic therapies can reduce depression and sexualised behaviour, and enhance self-esteem. Longer treatments are likely to yield larger improvements in symptoms. For adult victims, cognitive-behavioural and EMDR treatments have the largest treatment effects, while supportive therapies are contraindicated. Treatments should be symptom-specific, with functional assessment a likely effective tool to identify difficulties associated with presenting problems