Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence , which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This review presents a timely assessment of international evidence on any type of psychosocial intervention offered to individuals who experienced rape, sexual assault or sexual abuse as adults.
We also checked reference lists of included studies, contacted authors and experts, and ran forward citation searches. The experimental groups consisted of: 32 Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT ; 10 behavioural interventions; three integrative therapies; three humanist; five other psychologically oriented interventions; and seven other psychosocial interventions.
Five studies did not disclose a funding source, and all disclosed sources were public funding. Participants were invited from a range of settings: from the community, through the media, from universities and in places where people might seek help for their mental health e. The weighted mean age was Psychosocial interventions, however, may not increase the risk of dropout from treatment compared to controls, with a risk ratio of 0.
Seven of the 23 studies with participants comparing a psychosocial intervention to an inactive control reported on adverse events, with 21 events indicated. Psychosocial interventions may not increase the risk of adverse events compared to controls, with a risk ratio of 1. We conducted an assessment of risk of bias using the RoB 2 tool on a total of 49 reported results.
The greatest sources of bias were problems with randomisation and missing outcome data. Also, the differential effects of specific intervention types needs further investigation. Therefore, the needs and preferences of individuals must be considered in selecting suitable approaches to therapy and support. However, attaining such evidence from studies that lack an active comparison may be impractical and even unethical.
