Seeking Safety for women in incarceration: a systematic review.

Abstract

Seeking Safety is an evidence-based treatment for individuals with comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. This treatment shows promise to address the unique, unmet needs of women in prison. The current systematic literature review aims to highlight several critical gaps in research on Seeking Safety in forensic settings that need to be filled before Seeking Safety can be implemented in a widespread manner. PsycINFO, PubMed and Google scholar databases were used to identify studies that were published in English,included women in forensic settings, and incorporated Seeking Safety treatment. Atotal of seven studies met review criteria. The quality of studies was assessed with themixed methods appraisal tool. High risk of contamination, inclusion of small,predominantly White samples, high attrition rates, need for dose-response testing, andlack of follow-up data currently limit the ability to assess the efficacy of Seeking Safetyin forensic settings. In addition, there is a lack of research on Seeking Safety's ability toreduce symptoms of substance use disorder for incarcerated women and furthercultural adaptation may be needed. Seeking Safety has the potential toaddress the underlying causes of incarceration for justice-involved women, butadditional research addressing these identified gaps is needed to facilitate more widespreadimplementation.