Childhood Trauma as a Predictor of Change in Couple and Family Therapy: A Study of Treatment Response

This study aimed to examine if survivors of childhood abuse responded differently to couple and family therapy compared with patients without such experiences. The study included 36 couples and nine individuals (N = 81). Of these participants, 30.3% had disclosed being exposed to and/or physical or sexual abuse during childhood. All participants of this study had attended a 6-12-week residential couple and family treatment program at a specialized treatment facility in Norway. The t-tests showed that significant improvements occurred on measures assessing symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as relationship satisfaction and family functioning, from admission to discharge (effect sizes ranged from .31 to .92). The mixed model analyses showed that persons with a history of childhood trauma have greater symptoms of anxiety and depression at intake compared to persons without such experiences. Further, the mixed model analyses indicated that those who had been exposed to childhood abuse responded less to treatment measured weekly on family functioning than a person without a history of childhood abuse. Generalizability of this study is limited due to the relatively small sample size which has been drawn from a psychiatric population. Even so these findings imply that couple and family therapy is a suitable treatment of individual symptoms for both those who have and those who have not suffered childhood trauma. These results should motivate future research on the impact of trauma on therapeutic processes and outcomes, thus enabling tailored treatment approaches.