Rape Survivors

Survivors of rape are a high risk of suffering long-standing, harmful alterations in their functioning. Internalization of the rape, including how the survivor interprets the experience, leads to different psychological symptoms such as depression, anxiety, denial, or no reaction, which then manifests into different behaviors (i.e. substance abuse) for each survivor of rape. For example, Littleton and Breitkoft (2006) argued that survivors frequently experience feelings of self-blame and low self-esteem; and negative reactions from other people may strengthen these emotional feelings(Sigurvinsdottir, 2015). Rape survivors tend to give more weight to negative reactions than positive ones; thus, negative social reactions may stimulate strong emotional reactions from survivors (Sigurvinsdottir, 2015). Moreover, negative responses could reinforce already existing feelings of self-blame (Major et al., 1997). In fact, self-blame is a central construct in the rape trauma recovery because it is related to the loss of control that occurs during the rape and internalized feelings to it (Siguvinsdottir, 2015).
For example, behavioral self-blame occurs when the survivor attributes the rape to his/her actions, and characterological self-blame is when victims attribute the rape to the person’s character and therefore is more personal (Koss, Figueredo, & Prince, 2002). Both types of self-blame mediate the relationship between negative reactions and poor psychological adjustment that frequently leads to depression, PTSD, and substance abuse (Siguvinsdottir, 2015). In fact, outcome studies have shown that self-blame has been noted in over 50% of survivors and associated with elevated depressive and anxiety symptoms (Moor & Farchi,