UC Davis

Traumatized individuals are often encouraged to confront their experiences by talking or writing about them. However, survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) might find it especially difficult to process abuse experiences, particularly when the abuse is more severe, which could put them at greater risk for mental health problems. The current study examined whether CSA survivors who use emotion language when describing their abuse experiences exhibit better mental health. We analyzed the trauma narratives of 55 adults who, as children, were part of a larger study of the long-term emotional effects of criminal prosecutions on CSA survivors. Abuse narratives were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. We examined whether positive and negative emotion language in participants' abuse narratives were associated with self- and caregiver-reported mental health symptoms and whether these associations differed according to the severity of the abuse. As hypothesized, participants who used more positive and negative emotion language had better psychological outcomes, especially when the abuse was severe. Our findings suggest that survivors of more severe abuse might benefit from including emotion language, whether positive or negative in valence, when describing the abuse.