Child sexual abuse: A critical review of intervention and treatment modalities

Abstract

Recent years have ushered a growing understanding and a broadening knowledge base of the complexities of child sexual abuse. These complexities are acerbated by the need to account for the specific problem of child sexual abuse (CSA) in the larger context of multi-problem intervention, requiring coordinated multi-disciplinary team efforts as well as sensitive and focused attention to CSA itself. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the literature on several treatment modalities that are utilized by professionals from a range of disciplines treating victims of childhood sexual abuse. Acknowledging recent findings that dissociative disorders among CSA survivors are high compared to survivors of other forms of trauma and that about 80% of adult CSA survivors who were diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder actually suffer from dissociative disorders, the author discusses the phenomena of dissociative identity disorder among survivors who were sexually abused. The implications for the development of a therapeutic model are described, including a delineation of the model components.