The Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy for Trauma on Executive Functions in individuals with Sexual Trauma (Case Report)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of emotion-focused therapy on executive functions in individuals who have experienced sexual trauma. The target population was all sexually assaulted individuals who visited the Iran Trauma Institute in Mashhad in 2021. The research method was practical in nature, and the data collection was quantitative and experimental. Three of the ten individuals selected as samples were women, as determined by the entry criteria. Childhood trauma questionnaires (CTQ), Emotional visual working memory capacity (EVWMC) were implemented in this investigation. Visual analysis of the graphs depicting the changes in the research variables and the effect size of each variable on the clients, as well as the percentage of improvement and the percentage of reduction in their score changes, were employed to conduct the data analysis using the appropriate formulas in the SPSS-26 software. The effect sizes of emotion-focused therapy of trauma (EFTT) on the working memory capacity of individuals with sexual trauma were relatively high in all three participants during both the intervention and follow-up periods. The results indicated that EFTT enhanced the executive function of working memory capacity in sexually traumatized individuals from a clinical perspective, thereby preventing sexual revictimization.

Keywords

• emotion-focused therapy for trauma
• sexual trauma
• sexual revictimization
• working memory