TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotion Language in Trauma Narratives Is Associated With Better Psychological Adjustment Among Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
AU - Wardecker, Britney M.
AU - Edelstein, Robin S.
AU - Quas, Jodi A.
AU - Cordón, Ingrid M.
AU - Goodman, Gail S.
N1 - Funding Information:
Pathways T32 postdoctoral fellow (funded by the National Institute on Aging) in the Center for Healthy Aging, Department of Biobehavioral Health, at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests focus on stress, health, hormones, and lifespan perspectives.
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9602125. Britney Wardecker is partially supported by National Institute on Aging Grant T32 AG049676 to the Pennsylvania State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - Traumatized individuals are often encouraged to confront their experiences by talking or writing about them. However, survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) might find it especially difficult to process abuse experiences, particularly when the abuse is more severe. The current study examined whether CSA survivors who use emotion language when describing their abuse experiences exhibit better mental health. We analyzed the trauma narratives of 55 adults who, as children, were part of a larger study of the long-term emotional effects of criminal prosecutions on CSA survivors. Abuse narratives were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. We examined whether positive and negative emotion language in participants’ abuse narratives were associated with self- and caregiver-reported mental health symptoms and whether these associations differed by abuse severity. As hypothesized, participants who used more positive and negative emotion language had better psychological outcomes, especially when the abuse was more severe.
AB - Traumatized individuals are often encouraged to confront their experiences by talking or writing about them. However, survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) might find it especially difficult to process abuse experiences, particularly when the abuse is more severe. The current study examined whether CSA survivors who use emotion language when describing their abuse experiences exhibit better mental health. We analyzed the trauma narratives of 55 adults who, as children, were part of a larger study of the long-term emotional effects of criminal prosecutions on CSA survivors. Abuse narratives were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. We examined whether positive and negative emotion language in participants’ abuse narratives were associated with self- and caregiver-reported mental health symptoms and whether these associations differed by abuse severity. As hypothesized, participants who used more positive and negative emotion language had better psychological outcomes, especially when the abuse was more severe.
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U2 - 10.1177/0261927X17706940
DO - 10.1177/0261927X17706940
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85032734954
SN - 0261-927X
VL - 36
SP - 628
EP - 653
JO - Journal of Language and Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Language and Social Psychology
IS - 6
ER -
