Survivor Perceptions of Supporters’ Social Reactions in the Initial Months Following Sexual Assault: A Daily Diary Study

Abstract

Sexual assault survivors receive a variety of positive and negative social reactions when they seek support from friends, family, or others close to them (i.e., informal supporters). However, past research demonstrates that survivors’ perceptions of these social reactions are more varied than suggested by their traditional categorization as “positive” or “negative.” Although survivors experiencing elevated posttraumatic stress (PTS) and alcohol use may be at especially high risk of receiving “negative” reactions and experiencing poorer recovery outcomes, it is unclear to what degree these survivors vary in how they perceive these early reactions. Thus, the study objective was to characterize how survivors with elevated PTS and alcohol use perceive social reactions received from informal supporters during day-to-day assault-related interactions in the initial months after sexual assault. Adult female survivors of past-10-week sexual assault with elevated PTS and alcohol use (N = 41) completed a baseline assessment and daily diaries over 21 days as part of a larger mHealth clinical trial. Results indicated that survivors’ perceptions of the social reactions they received during this early period varied considerably. Findings also indicated that survivors were more likely to perceive an interaction overall as upsetting when the specific “negative” reactions of controlling and infantilization were present. This suggests that specific reactions hold more sway over a survivor’s perception of a given interaction than others and further reinforces that there is no one-size-fits-all characterization of how survivors perceive the social reactions they receive when discussing their sexual assault with others.