For kidnap victims like 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. So uncommon are situations like hers that mental health experts have few examples to guide them.
They can turn to the case of Natascha Kampusch of Vienna, kidnapped at age 10 on her way to school in 1998 and held for 8 1/2 years before escaping. After an apparent recovery that included her own television talk show and celebrity dating, she retreated into her apartment and rarely leaves it now.
Or they can look to Elisabeth Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, dragged into a dungeon by her father at 18 and held for 24 years as she gave birth to seven children. Despite extensive rehabilitation, media reports indicate she is not doing well.
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 compound and have known only lives of deprivation. They have never attended school or visited a doctor, and their father, Phillip Garrido, is now in El Dorado County Jail facing charges of rape, kidnapping and other criminal offenses.
Authorities searching Garrido's Antioch house Saturday expanded the crime scene to include the neighboring home of Damon Robinson, according to the Associated Press. Robinson told The Times on Friday that Garrido had taken care of the house before he moved in three years ago, and that Robinson found "all the locks on my home were backward. You could lock people in" but not out.
For Dugard and her daughters, adjusting to freedom will be a long, arduous process.
Dugard's top priority, experts said, should be to get reacquainted with her mother -- though not too fast -- and begin intensive psychological and psychiatric treatment.
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.
Still, the psychological scars from her experience will probably affect her day-to-day life for the foreseeable future and may make it impossible for her to ever live on her own, hold a job or form lasting romantic relationships.
