Abstract
The purpose of this paper was to clarify characteristics of "emotional experience" that crime victims experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder went through during the recovery process, and to identify aspects of emotional experience influencing the recovery. Unstructured interviews were performed with 10 patients who had supplied informed consent in consideration of ethical issues. The data was analyzed using qualitative and inductive methods. The patients were then divided into "recovering" and "non-recovering" groups based on the changes of Impact of Event Scale-Revised points, and these groups were compared. The following results were acquired to form a suggestion to the mental-health nursing in the community. 1. The emotional experience were classified into Eight categories, as follows: 1) Emotional experience toward the damage; 2) Emotional experience toward the police; 3) Emotional experience toward the trial; 4) Painful experience after the damage; 5) Emotional experience during the recovery; 6) Emotional experience in relationship to family; 7) Emotional experience in relationship to friends; 8) Emotional experience in relationship to society. This clarified that "The entire aspect of the emotional experiences of crime victims throughout the recovery process" in order to understand the object better. 2. The results discovered that "fear that a patient's safety was threatened" was the characteristic emotional experience of the non-recovering group, while "anger towards the assailants" was the characteristic emotional experience of the recovering group.
