For kidnap victims such as Jaycee Lee Dugard, recovery is rare.
A full portion of her life - her entire teens and 20s - was poisoned by her abduction at age 11 and the 18 years of brutal captivity and deprivation that followed.
Even psychologists and psychiatrists skilled at confronting the worst of human nature find it hard to fathom how Dugard can put the pieces back together and live some semblance of a normal existence.
Things could well be worse for Dugard's two daughters, who were born into captivity in a ramshackle Antioch, Calif., compound and have known only lives of deprivation. They have never attended school or visited a doctor, and their father - alleged captor Phillip Garrido - is now in El Dorado County Jail facing charges of rape, kidnapping and other criminal offenses.
For all three, adjusting to freedom will be a long, arduous process.
Dugard's top priority should be to get reacquainted with her mother - though not too fast - and begin intensive psychological and psychiatric treatment, experts said.
She is at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder now that her ordeal is over. But if proper steps are taken early, the chances of her developing that, and other problems such as depression, can be minimized.
"The adjustment to the outside world is going to be very brutal," said psychologist Naftali Berill, director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science. "How do you undo years of abuse, years of being held captive?"
In the first weeks and months after a kidnapping victim is freed, he or she is likely to experience anxiety, tension, sleep disturbances, loneliness, headaches and intestinal problems, among other symptoms.
A key issue for Dugard, now 29, will be how she re-establishes her relationship with her mother, Terry Probyn, who lives in Riverside County, Calif.
Mother and daughter should resist the urge to try to pick up their lives as left off in June 1991, when Dugard was abducted in her South Lake Tahoe neighborhood as she walked to a bus stop. Dugard "needs to be in intensive therapy and slowly come back so that her emotional feelings can be transferred back to her mother," said Katherine van Wormer of the University of Northern Iowa, who has studied the behavior of kidnapping victims.
And though it may seem cathartic to recount 18 years' worth of horrific details, this might make matters worse. You especially don't want to discuss details of the ordeal in public.
