Seeking Safety: An Intervention for Trauma-Exposed Incarcerated Women?

Abstract

Recent guidelines for incarcerated women's programming have called for interventions that address offenders' traumatic experiences, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use in an integrated manner. Seeking Safety (SS) is an empirically supported cognitive behavioral manualized treatment for individuals with PTSD and substance use disorders. This study examined the effectiveness of SS with 59 incarcerated women who completed the intervention and 55 who were waitlisted. Participants in SS demonstrated greater symptom improvement in PTSD and depression as well as improved interpersonal functioning and coping as compared to waitlisted offenders. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of this intervention with incarcerated women.

Keywords:

• incarcerated women
• interpersonal violence
• group treatment

Acknowledgments

First and foremost the authors express their appreciation to the women who chose to participate in this treatment outcome study. They also want to thank the prison administrators and staff whose support made this project possible. Next, this project received funding from the Idaho State University Research Committee and Humanities and Social Science Research Committee. The authors also thank their numerous research team members for their roles as group facilitators, interviewers, or data enterers. Finally, they thank Maria Wong for her statistical consultation.