Are There Really Any Survivors?

".. what does it really mean to be a "survivor?" Does it mean a person is free from all the damage done to them at such a young age? No it doesn't. All it really means is they have stopped burying it and denying it and keeping silent about it, and have finally gathered up the courage to speak out against it .."

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DVD Documentary Captures The Pain of Clergy Sex Abuse Victims

".. a group of clergy sex abuse victims, an offending priest and others affected by the Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis .. decided to have the session professionally videotaped … Their collaboration has produced "The Healing Circle," an hourlong documentary on DVD that has caught the attention of some Catholic bishops and the lay committee that advises them on policy and training after the clergy sex abuse scandal .."

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Book Review: Moon Cussers by Wade Younger

".. Moon Cussers tells of the true life journey of Wade Younger’s search for himself in order to find healing and resolution from his sexual childhood abuse … While Moon Cussers is certainly written to help the victims of sexual childhood abuse, sexual abuse victims rarely suffer alone. The complex emotional baggage often leads to other, more symptomatic, problems later in life including alcoholism, depression, and abusive behavior. The book peels back the layers of distrust, self-loathing, and vulnerability to help victims and their loved ones understand the sources of these feelings .. "

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Unique Effects of Alcohol on Women

".. Among female alcoholics, a strong association with major depression has been demonstrated. The relative risk for heavy drinking is 2.60 times greater in women with a history of depression as compared to women without a history of depressive disorder .. Women also have a higher incidence of premorbid anxiety disorders,42 and a greater severity of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms than do men with similar traumatic exposures .."

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Recovered Memories

".. traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.[12] A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma .. "

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