Abstract: Themes from Online Reports about Homicide/Assault Survivors

Violence survivors are more prone to post-traumatic stress disorder (Day, 2009). Group therapy and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) are used to aid survivors in their recovery process (Nixon, 2007). Based on these facts, we hypothesized that survivors of attempted homicide who reported receiving therapy or counseling had a better self-reported outcomes than those who reported not receiving any. Data was collected via four search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing) using  the keywords “homicide survivor forum”, “assault survivor forum”, “homicide survivor blog”, and “assault survivor blog” using Hatch’s (2002) three phase method for inductive, thematic (qualitative) analysis of narrative data. We determined that the theme with the highest saturation (2/3) was the theme of healing and/or getting support.