Betrayal trauma: Relationship to physical health, psychological distress, and a written disclosure intervention

ABSTRACT. In the current study we sought, first, to distinguish associ-ations with health arising from types of trauma as indicated by betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1996, 2001), and, second, to investigate the im-pact of disclosing a trauma history in survey form and/or writing essays about betrayal traumas. We recruited 99 community adults reporting at least 12 months of chronic medical illness or pain, 80 of whom com-pleted all four sessions of this six-month longitudinal intervention study. Participants were randomly assigned to write about betrayal traumas or neutral events, and they were randomly assigned to complete an exten