Sexual assault leaves deep scars. One way people cope is by thinking about what could have been. This is called counterfactual thinking. It's when someone wonders, "What if things had gone differently? " or "If only that hadn't happened. " This kind of thinking is common after trauma. It can help people make sense of what happened. But it can also make psychological ...

Young individuals who were involved in the traumatic events from the Utøya island attack in Norway, have been studied for years to understand how they cope with the impact. The goal of the study was to see how their negative thoughts and posttraumatic stress reactions changed over time. The study focused on three main questions. Firstly, whether these negat...