Change in rape narratives during exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder

Abstract

It has been proposed that persistent emotional disturbances following a highly distressing event indicate an inadequate processing of that event (Foa & Kozak, 1986;Rachman, 1980). Accordingly, chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) indicates impaired processing of the trauma. Foa and Riggs (1993) proposed that traumatic memories are often disorganized and fragmented because they are encoded while the individual experiences extreme anxiety. The natural process of recovery from a trauma, they suggested, involves the organizing and streamlining of the memories. It follows that the memories of individuals who fail to recover from the trauma, and thus evidence chronic PTSD, will remain disjointed and that successful

Changes in PTSD patients' narratives during prolonged exposure therapy: A replication and extension

“…Narratives were coded according to a standardized coding manual (Foa et al, 1995). First, the narratives of the first and last exposure sessions were transcribed.…”

“…Most research thus so far has focused on narrative content (e.g., Pennebaker, 1993). In contrast, Foa, Molnar, and Cashman (1995) explored the process of narrative organization during PTSD treatment. Assuming that traumatic memories differ from other types of memories, Foa and colleagues argued that trauma recovery requires a special type of mental processing.…”

“…To test this, Foa et al (1995) developed a coding system and examined the cohesiveness of patients' trauma narratives. They hypothesized that successful treatment results in a decrease in fragmentation and an increase in narrative organization.…”

Alterations in autobiographical memory for a blast event in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans with mild traumatic brain injury.

“…If degraded encoding of psychologically-traumatic events does increase risk of PTSD, the prevalence of PTSD among warzone veterans with mTBI may in part reflect acutely disrupted cognitive processes, which interfere with the organizational structure (i.e., coherence) of brain injury events that are also psychologically traumatic . Indeed, there is some empirical support that traumatic memories in PTSD are fragmented and less coherent relative to those experienced by individuals without PTSD (e.g., Foa et al, 1995;Jelinek, Randjbar, Seifert, Kellner, & Moritz, 2009). However, other studies have failed to demonstrate reduced coherence in PTSD (e.g., Berntsen & Rubin, 2014;Rubin, 2011).…”

“…These categories are conceptually broad, thereby making it difficult to ascertain whether the deficits in thematic coherence observed in the mTBI group are due to difficulty in topic development, elaboration, or making causal linkages to personal identity -all of which are subsumed under the theme category. Additional techniques for assessing other aspects of coherence at a microanalytic level (Foa, Molnar, & Cashman, 1995) may be useful for clarifying this issue.…”