Relationship between Traumatic Events and Social Support (accepted for publication in the Journal of Traumatic Stress 2002):
The study was conducted to study the relationship between traumatic events and social support through different age groups. It hypothesized that individuals who experience childhood maltreatment enjoy less social support tan those exposed to political trauma in adulthood, and that social support buffers psychological distress, especially among victims of childhood maltreatment. The study sample consisted on 585 randomly sampled Palestinian women and men of 16-60 years of age.

General SEM models substantiated the hypothesis that childhood maltreatment was negatively associated with social support; whereas adult political trauma showed a positive association. Result through multi-group SEM comparisons revealed a buffering effect for political trauma in adulthood, but not for childhood maltreatment. In addition, results showed that maltreated women reported lower levels of emotional and esteem-related support than non-traumatized women. Men exposed to political trauma were generally more satisfied with the content and source of social support than men with no-trauma exposure.

Self and Object Representations and Therapy Participation Predicting Changes in Symptoms and Personals Growth among Trauma Victims (accepted for publication in the Therapy Research Journal 2002): The study examined the roles of therapy participation and self and object representations in predicting post-traumatic and somatic symptoms, and personal growth among trauma victims. The sample consisted of Palestinian former political prisoners, 20 participating in individual therapy and 19 participating in group therapy on a weekly basic for one year. The control group consisted of 75 former political prisoners who did not receive any treatment.

Results showed that avoidance and hyper arousal symptoms decrease among men participating in individual therapy only, whereas there was no decrease in these symptoms among the group therapy and control groups. Somatic symptoms decreased generally, but no changes were found in positive content and differentiated and mature structure would predict good therapy outcome. However, results showed that the moderate representation style promoted symptoms decrease. The intrusive symptoms decreased across one year especially in the group with "moderate parents and negative spouse" representations. These results contribute to planning therapy for trauma victims by emphasizing the personal meanings and cognitive-emotional reworking of interpersonal relationships.