Treatment-as-usual can be defined as the commonly used psychotherapy for abused women in Iran, such as medical therapy and/or supportive psychotherapy.

Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) is a standardized short-term approach based on the principles of cognitive behavioral exposure therapy and testimony therapy for the treatment of PTSD resulting from organized violence.

Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) is a treatment approach that was developed by a research group of the University of Konstanz (Schauer, Neuner, & Elbert, 2005, 2011). In NET, the patient repeatedly talks about the most arousing traumatic events in detail while re-experiencing the emotions associated with this event. In the process, the patient constructs a narration of his life, focusing on the detailed report of the traumatic experiences.

The PDS/PSS-I is a 17-item screening instrument on a 4-point-Likert-scale (0 = not at all to 3 = very much). The PDS aims at assessing all Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) criteria of a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and thus it includes information about the nature of the traumatic event and the level of functional interference.

The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) is a self-administered version of the PRIME-MD diagnostic instrument for common mental disorders. The PHQ-9 is the depression module

The Hopkins Symptom Checklist 25 would be used to screen for symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) would be used to assess the perception of stress over the course of the last month preceding the interview

The CAS, a 30-item validated research instrument, is a widely used self-report questionnaire of behaviors that women describe as abusive by their partners. It is a self-report measure that provides standardized sub scale scores on four dimensions of intimate partner abuse. The four dimensions are Severe Combined Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, and Harassment, scaled from 0 (never) to 5 (daily) over a period of 12-month.

The BSL-23 is a shortened form of the full version of the BSL-95. The self-report questionnaire assesses borderline-specific symptomatology on a five response scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 4 (very strongly).