The Efficacy of the Christian-Adapted REACH Forgiveness Intervention with African-American Christian Women

The REACH forgiveness intervention is an empirically supported treatment for unforgiveness that has been researched extensively with college students and other populations. Despite this, the efficacy of REACH has never been tested with African-American, Christian women. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of the Christian-adapted version of REACH (C-REACH) with African-American, Christian women. Seven African-American, Christian women from Bryan/College Station, TX were recruited from local-area African-American churches to participate in the study. The mean age of the sample was 40.45 and the participants identified different types of offenses they wished to forgive during the C-REACH curriculum, such as romantic relationship offenses, childhood sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and public humiliation. Participants were examined on different types of forgiveness and mental health outcomes before and after being administered eight hours of the C-REACH intervention. They also answered a qualitative follow-up questionnaire approximately one month after the termination of the study. Individual- and group-level analyses were conducted using Tau analysis. Group-level results indicate that C-REACH was effective in facilitating forgiveness of a specific offense within this sample of African-American Christian women. However, this sample’s trait forgivingness, depression, and anxiety were not significantly impacted by C-REAC