What Research from Seven Countries Tells Us About Healing from Gender-Based Violence

Reviewed by Heard & Believed · Updated 2026-07-28

A peer-reviewed study published in 2026 examined how 136 survivors of gender-based violence across seven countries navigate healing, and found shared themes that cross cultural lines: the importance of building a positive self-concept, seeking connection, and finding strength through the experience of surviving.

What the Research Found Across Seven Countries

A 2026 peer-reviewed study published in an international qualitative research journal examined healing from gender-based violence through the voices of 136 survivors across seven global contexts. The researchers were interested in what survivors themselves identified as the most important actions and experiences in their healing, rather than what researchers or clinicians assumed those experiences to be. By centering survivor perspectives, the study produced findings that feel grounded in lived experience rather than clinical abstraction.

The study found both themes that were shared across all seven countries and themes that were culturally specific. The shared themes are particularly meaningful because they suggest that some aspects of healing from gender-based violence are deeply human rather than culturally determined. Among the shared themes were: taking concrete actions to promote healing, building or rebuilding a positive sense of self, and finding a form of strength or meaning in having survived. These themes appeared in every cultural context the researchers examined, suggesting they may be foundational to recovery across diverse settings.

Culturally distinct themes also emerged, reflecting the reality that healing happens within communities, relationships, and belief systems that shape how survivors understand their experience and what resources are available to them. This finding is a reminder that what worked for someone in one community or context may not be the right fit for someone in a different one, and that there is no single correct path to healing. What the research does affirm is that healing is possible across all of these very different contexts, and that survivors who actively engage with whatever resources resonate with them are the ones most likely to describe meaningful recovery.

What Building a Positive Self-Concept Looks Like in Practice

One of the most consistent findings across the seven countries in the 2026 research was the importance of building and maintaining a positive self-concept during recovery. Gender-based violence and sexual abuse frequently damage the survivor's sense of who they are: their sense of worth, their trust in their own perceptions, and their ability to imagine a future that belongs to them. Rebuilding that self-concept is not a single moment of insight but a gradual process that happens through small, concrete experiences of competence, connection, and self-compassion.

Survivors in the research described a wide range of practices that supported rebuilding a positive self-concept. Some found it through creative work: writing, art, music, or movement that helped them express what they had experienced and reclaim a sense of agency over their own story. Others found it through relationships: friendships, peer support groups, or therapeutic relationships in which they felt genuinely heard and valued. Still others found it through spiritual practices, community involvement, or advocacy work that transformed their experience of surviving into a source of meaning and purpose.

What these varied practices have in common is that they are active rather than passive. They involve the survivor doing something, making something, or connecting with someone. Healing researchers have noted that passively waiting for pain to diminish rarely produces recovery on its own. The survivors in this research who described meaningful healing were typically those who had found some form of active engagement with their own recovery process, however different that engagement looked from person to person.

What This Research Means for You

If you are a survivor reading this, the most important thing this research offers is validation: healing is real, it is documented across seven countries and 136 different individuals, and it does not require any particular method or timeline. There is no single correct way to recover, and there is no pace at which you are supposed to be healing. The research shows that survivors find their way through vastly different paths, all of which share the common thread of active engagement with whatever supports are available and meaningful to them.

It also matters that this research was built on what survivors themselves said worked. The findings are not a clinician's theory about what recovery should look like. They are an account of what 136 people who had experienced gender-based violence across seven countries identified as genuinely helpful in their healing. Their voice is the foundation of the findings, and that includes voices that will sound like yours even if the specific details are different.

If you are looking for a place to start, the National Sexual Assault Hotline at RAINN is free and confidential, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at 800-656-4673. RAINN can connect you with local resources, support groups, and counselors who specialize in trauma recovery. You do not have to figure out what comes next alone, and reaching out is not a commitment to any particular path. It is just a step, and steps are how healing moves.

Seven Healing Practices That Survivors Across Cultures Have Found Meaningful

The 2026 research and related trauma recovery literature describe a wide range of approaches that survivors have found genuinely helpful. There is no single right answer, and what works is personal. These are starting points, not prescriptions:

1. Connecting with a counselor who specializes in trauma: Trauma-informed therapy is different from general counseling. Therapists trained in trauma understand how trauma affects the brain and nervous system and can provide support that meets you where you are without requiring you to revisit details before you are ready.
2. Joining a peer support group: Connecting with other survivors who have had similar experiences can reduce the isolation that abuse often creates. Hearing from others who are further along in recovery can also provide perspective and hope about what healing can look like.
3. Creative expression: Writing, art, music, and movement have all been described by survivors across cultures as meaningful tools for processing experiences that are difficult to put into words. Creative work gives voice to experiences without requiring linear narrative or explanation.
4. Physical movement and body-based practices: Trauma is often stored in the body as well as in memory. Practices like yoga, walking, swimming, martial arts, or dance can support healing by rebuilding a sense of safety and agency within the body.
5. Spiritual or community practice: For many survivors, spiritual practice, religious community, or cultural community provides a framework for making meaning of their experience and a source of support that extends beyond formal mental health services.
6. Advocacy or peer mentorship: Some survivors find that contributing to advocacy work or mentoring others who have had similar experiences transforms their own experience of surviving into a source of purpose and agency.
7. Building routines that support stability: Trauma disrupts the nervous system's sense of safety and predictability. Gentle, consistent daily routines, including regular sleep, meals, and movement, can support regulation and provide a foundation for other healing work.

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