Resilience and Spirituality among Sexually Abused Victims

Trauma is one of the most significant and unavoidable outcomes of a violent conflict. One such trauma in a conflict zone that may have multiple impacts on the mental, social and emotional functioning of the individual is sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is an abuse of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Following a trauma such as sexual assault, an individual is confronted with extreme stress that requires coping with a new, unexpected, and unfamiliar situation. Positive psychological changes like resilience and spirituality help the rape victim to redefine self. So, the objective of the present study was to compare sexually abused victims and non abused individuals on the measures of resilience with its subtypes, spirituality and to examine their relationship. It was hypothesized that there would be a significant relation among the measures of resilient with its subtypes and spirituality among female trauma victims with sexual assault and non-abused individuals. The sample consisted of 60 adult females out of which 30 were sexually abused and rest 30 did not report any incident of sexual abuse. The Spirituality and Resilience Assessment Packet by Kass (2000) was administered on both the groups and a two group design was incorporated to meet the objectives. The results revealed significant difference between the two groups indicating that the mean scores of sexually abused group were higher as compared to non abused group. Also significant correlations were found between the various types of resilience and spirituality indicating difference between means for both the groups. Hence, it can be concluded that an increase in these factors were associated with increases in self-reported positive life changes over time. Further research on related topics, based on the findings of the present and other studies, will undoubtedly advance our understanding of the positive psychological changes following sexual abuse.