Psychosocial and Economic Impacts of Narrative Exposure Therapy for Violence Survivors in Eastern DRC

Summary

The objective of the study is to evaluate the impact of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) delivered by local counselors, on the mental health and socio-economic empowerment of survivors of Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) who suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), in North and South Kivu in Eastern DRC. The counselors will be trained and supervised by clinical experts from the NGO Vivo International. The therapy is expected to reduce the symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety in SGBV survivors. The project is expected to directly impact and improve the beneficiaries' mental health outcomes of interest, and to indirectly impact and enhance their economic empowerment in the medium term and social functioning both in the short and medium term. This proposed impact evaluation will answer the following research questions: 1) What is the impact of NET on survivors' psychosocial wellbeing, economic empowerment and social functioning and participation? 2) Does the impact of NET differ depending on individual and household characteristics as well as context-specific factors?

Conditions

• Mental Health Disorder
• PTSD
• Depression Anxiety Disorder
• Gender-based Violence

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

NET Treatment

Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) aims to address PTSD symptoms among survivors of mass violence and torture (Onyut et al., 2004; Schauer, et al., 2005). Mainly, different from other psychosocial interventions which require the survivor to process a single traumatic event in his or her life at a given time, NET treatment recognizes that trauma survivors undergo multiple distressing events within their lifetime (Schauer et al., 2005). Focusing on the traumatic events, the patient constructs a chronological narrative of his or her life story and a coherent narrative is then structured with the assistance of the therapist. They received NET one to three months following their screening and randomization. The therapy involves 8 to 12 individual sessions of about 90 minutes each.

OTHER

Alternative Intervention

Individuals in control group received non-NET psychosocial support in the interim that is provided to SGBV survivors as part of the Great Lakes SGBV project and will then receive NET after endline data has been collected.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Fonds Social de la République Démocratique du Congo

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Vivo international e.V.

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• World Bank

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Julia Vaillant, PhD · World Bank

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-06-29

Primary Completion

2021-02-14

Completion

2021-02-14

Countries

• Democratic Republic of the Congo

Study Locations