Research Matters Women

are diagnosed with a host of mental health problems, in-cluding depres-sion, anxiety and post trau-matic stress disorder (PTSD), more often than men. Why? This mystery has inspired countless theo-ries, but has remained unsolved. Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT; Freyd, 1996) may provide a frame-work for understanding some of the gender differences in mental distress by focusing on the relationship be-tween the victim and perpetrator in abuse exposure. With support from CSWS, my students and I have been developing BTT since the early 1990s. BTT postulates that betrayal traumas—abuses perpetrated by someone the victim trusts and de-pends upon—pose unique challenges to the victim, creating a conflict between the need to maintain a re-lationship and the need to respond to betrayal with protective action. While protective action might usual-ly involve confronting or withdraw-ing from the perpetrator, the require-ments of maintaining a necessary re-lationship may make such a response dangerous. BTT proposes that this bind leads to a number of serious reactions, including betrayal blind-ness and risk for mental and physical distress. Although child abuse is the prototypical betrayal trauma, Platt, Barton, and Freyd (2009) have also explored the plight of battered wom-en in terms of betrayal trauma theory. Our empirical research con-firmed that exposure to traumas high in betrayal (e.g., assault by a close other) is linked to poorer mental health outcomes, includ-ing symptoms of depression, anxiety, dissociation, PTSD, bor-derline personality, and physical health problems (Edwards, et al, under review; Freyd, Klest, an