Affective Responses of Counselors to Child Sexual Abuse Disclosure: Counselor Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Research has found that the counselor?s response to disclosure of child sexual abuse experiences has a significant impact on the client?s well-being, continuation in therapy, and progress in treatment. However, few studies have investigated the counselor?s affective responses to a client who discloses a child sexual abuse history. This book investigates the range of counselor?s affective responses when confronted with the topic of child sexual abuse and to investigate what factors influenced these reactions. The analysis suggested that measuring affectiveresponses to child sexual abuse is a complex and multidimensional construct with many variances. In addition, the findings of the study support the importance of counselors and counselors-in-training to be prepared prior to their first exposure to clients who disclose child sexual abuse to illicit more positive responses from such clients. Thus, the results of this study support the need for more child sexual abuse training and counselor experience in order to deflect any negative responses on clients who disclose child sexual abuse.