Vitale, A and Enright, E (2024) The effectiveness of COURAGE in promoting the mental health of domestic abuse survivors. In: 33rd International Congress of Psychology (ICP), 21 - 26 July 2024, Prague, Czech Republic.
Abstract
The rates of domestic abuse in the UK are high, especially since the pandemic, with significant consequences for the survivors’ health and wellbeing. While there are services in place to provide practical and legal guidance for women who are going through domestic abuse, much is still needed to develop therapeutic interventions to support their mental health as well as to make them feel less isolated. This study is set in this context, and it aims to explore the effectiveness of COURAGE, a narrative therapy group intervention developed to support individuals who experience multiple levels of trauma, to fit the specific needs of domestic abuse survivors. Five women who experienced domestic abuse participated in the study. They took part in eight weekly COURAGE sessions of two hours each. The sessions followed the manualized version of COURAGE, and they embedded artmaking activities such as mapmaking and storytelling. The structure of the sessions includes group and individual activities based on the principle of narrative therapy. A multiple case study design was adopted to collect and analyze the data. This was done by combining participants’ pre and post-COURAGE individual interviews, as well as the artmaking produced during the sessions, and the researchers’ observational notes. The findings indicated that participants’ main motivation to take part in the study was to ease their sense of solitude as well as to build strength while they were experiencing the abuse. Participants benefited from COURAGE in terms of building cohesiveness and a sense of belonging, reframing disempowering stories to build positive self-narratives, strengthening resilience, and building hope for the future. Implications and future directions will be discussed.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | School of Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Aug 2024 12:37 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2024 12:37 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16388 |
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