Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1370524
This article is part of the Research Topic Sexual Abuse and Women's Mental Health View all 5 articles

Linking Alcohol-Involved Sexual Assault to Negative Emotional Outcomes: The Relative Mediating Roles of Shame, Self-Compassion, Fear of Self-Compassion, and Self-Blame

Provisionally accepted
Sherry H. Stewart Sherry H. Stewart 1*Noelle Strickland Noelle Strickland 1Raquel Nogueira-Arjona Raquel Nogueira-Arjona 2Christine Wekerle Christine Wekerle 3
  • 1 Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
  • 2 Sussex Addiction Research and Intervention Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
  • 3 Offord Centre for Child Studies, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Alcohol-involved sexual assault (AISA) survivors who were drinking at the time of the assault may be at risk of internalizing victim-blaming myths and stigma. Cognitive-behavioral models posit the link between AISA and negative emotional outcomes may be explained through maladaptive appraisals and coping -- i.e., characterological and behavioral self-blame, shame, low self-compassion (i.e., high self-coldness, low self-caring), and fear of self-compassion. Using a cross-sectional design and community sample of younger adults (N = 409 Canadians, M = 28.2 years old, 51.3% women), we examined these mechanisms' unique effects in mediating the associations between AISA and posttraumatic stress, general anxiety, and depressive symptoms, respectively. In terms of gender differences, AISA was more common, self-coldness higher, and general anxiety symptoms more frequent in women, and fear of self-compassion was higher in men. Using structural equation modelling that controlled for gender and the overlap between outcomes, shame emerged as the strongest mediator linking AISA with all emotional outcomes. Fear of self-compassion also partially mediated the AISA-posttraumatic stress symptom association, self-coldness partially mediated the AISA-general anxiety symptom association, and characterological self-blame fully mediated the AISA-depressive symptom association. Thus, avoidance-based processes, ruminative-/worry-based cognitions, and negative self-evaluative cognitions may be distinctly relevant for AISA-related posttraumatic stress, general anxiety, and depressive symptoms, respectively, after accounting for the overarching mediation through shame. These internalized stigma-related mechanisms may be useful to prioritize in treatment to potentially reduce AISA-related negative emotional outcomes, particularly for AISA survivors with posttraumatic stress, general anxiety, and/or depressive symptoms.

    Keywords: Alcohol-involved sexual assault, posttraumatic stress, Anxiety, Depression, Shame, self-blame, self-compassion, fear of self-compassion

    Received: 14 Jan 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Stewart, Strickland, Nogueira-Arjona and Wekerle. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Sherry H. Stewart, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.