/Sex trafficking is an ongoing problem, not just in the United States but in other countries

as well. From the literature on this subject sex trafficking is a tricky social problem to gather

reliable data on. No one knows the cause for sex trafficking, why people do it, or how they get

into it. The big question about this social issue is how can humans treat other humans this way?

What makes them want to dehumanize and hurt other people? Treatment for this issue is also an

ongoing discussion. People who study this subject in psychology have tried many different

treatment options for victims of sex trafficking and are all faced with the same problem of not

being sure which treatment method is most beneficial to the victim of sex trafficking.

What do we know about the prevalence of sex trafficking? All the literature that was

given in class tried to explain the prevalence of sex trafficking but remains unsuccessful.

According to the National Academies of science engineering and medicine 2020 the information

on sex trafficking is very limited and can't describe how prevalent the problem is in the United

States and other countries. From the studies that we read in class, much of the information people

tried to obtain was who is targeted for sex trafficking and why some people are prone to sex

trafficking. It also discussed ways that researchers tried to gain this information, such as surveys

and government archives. Most of the research that researchers ran into was identified as a

“woozle effect” (Gelles 1980; Salisbury et al 2015;Weiner and Hala 2008)

What do we know about treatments of sex trafficking? The treatments of sex trafficking

tend to have the same results as the studies, they are very inconclusive and sometimes unreliable.

According to Ottisisoua et al 2016 prior reviews and studies have not been focused on the

effectiveness of the victims mental health. This led to researchers experimenting with different

methods of therapies to establish a better way of helping the victims mental health with coping

mechanisms. Two therapy studies that were conducted were STARS therapy (Hopper et al 2018)
and trauma informed art therapy (Kometiani and Farmer 2020) only one of these studies focused

on a non-traumatic focused program. While these studies proved to be effective they did not

involve activities related to the victims sexual trauma. (Volgin et al 2019)

All in all, sex trafficking is a continuing social issue in the world and it is a struggle to

understand why people would do this to each other. It's also a great hardship to figure out how to

treat this issue and the people targeted, and associated with it. Many of the articles and studies

that were read all established that there is no cause to sex trafficking and it is ongoing and

difficult to treat. I assume newer methods are being created, but individuals need to be aware of

situations that might lead to sex trafficking, not for the safety of themselves but for others as

well.
 Works cited

Cunha, A., Martinho, G., Gonçalves, M., & Matos, M. (2022). Addressing the

psychological trauma in human trafficking victims: A brief review. Psychological Trauma:

Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001341.supp (Supplemental)

Franchino-Olsen, H., Chesworth, B. R., Boyle, C., Rizo, C. F., Martin, S. L., Jordan, B.,

Macy, R. J., & Stevens, L. (2022). The prevalence of sex trafficking of children and adolescents

in the United States: A scoping review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 23(1), 182–195.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838020933873

Nemeth. (2019). Estimating the prevalence of human trafficking: Progress made and

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