Outcome of therapy for sexually abused children: a repeated measures study

The outcome of abuse-focused treatment was examined in a sample of 105 sexually abused children, 71 of whom completed 3 months of treatment or longer. Symptom change was measured with the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC; Briere, in press) and the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1983, 1992), administered at 3 month intervals. The CDI and all TSCC scales but Sexual Concerns decreased after 3 months of therapy, and of these, all but Dissociation continued to decline at one or more assessment periods thereafter. At 6 months, those remaining in therapy continued to decrease on the CDI and on the Anxiety, Depression, Post-traumatic Stress, and Sexual Concerns scales of the TSCC. At 9 months Anxiety and Post-traumatic Stress continued to decrease, and at 1 year those still in treatment showed decrements in Anxiety, Depression, and Post-traumatic Stress. These changes are hypothesized to be due to treatment per se, rather than merely as a result of the passage of time. In this regard, multiple regression analyses indicated that time from the end of abuse to either the beginning or the end of treatment was far less predictive of post-treatment TSCC or CDI scores than was number of months specifically spent in treatment.