When families of children who have experienced extra-familial sexual abuse are included in treatment, they are often seen by therapists who are viewed as experts using psychoeducational models. Such a framework does not emphasize how families discover their own resources or develop new meanings of their experiences. This study evaluated whether, and how, a program based on constructivist principles helped to empower a group of sexually abused boys and their families by creating a collaborative, rather than a hierarchical, therapeutic relationship. A post-treatment evaluation was performed by means of three semi-structured interviews and completion of two simple questionnaires. Through in-depth interviews with the boys and their families, information was gathered on the subjective experiences of the clients regarding both the abuse and the healing process. Themes were generated from the data in the final analysis to assess severity of PTSD symptoms and to describe the constructivist group process. A model was proposed for the treatment of extra-familial sexual abuse based on constructivist principles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8802 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Kellner, Lynne Ann |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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