Treating Psychological Trauma and PTSD

Book Overview

This volume presents an innovative psychobiological framework for understanding and treating PTSD. A major emphasis is the need to reformulate diagnostic criteria and treatment goals to reflect emerging knowledge about the complex pathways by which trauma disrupts people's lives. Within a holistic, organismic framework, the editors identify 65 PTSD symptoms contained within five (rather than the traditional three) symptom clusters, and spell out 80 target objectives for treatment. Expert contributors then provide detailed presentations of core therapeutic approaches, including acute posttraumatic interventions, cognitive-behavioral approaches, pharmacotherapy, group psychotherapy, and psychodynamic techniques, as well as approaches to working with specific populations, including children, refugees, and the dually diagnosed. The concluding section reviews and synthesizes all case material presented, examining which symptoms are addressed by each of the core approaches, which treatment goals are met, and which clients can most effectively be helped. Combining cutting-edge theoretical exposition with clear-cut recommendations for practice, this is an ideal resource for clinicians, students, and researchers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593850174
• ISBN13: 9781593850173
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Guilford Publications
• Length: 467 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Reference Guide

I am using this book as a reference guide to treatment manual that I have regarding drug addictions and PTSD. It has been helpful.

A foundational reference

This text is a fundamental starting point for any clinician who even has an occasional case that involves traumatic stress; a must for those who work with survivors on a regular basis. This is an invaluable reference book that represents decades of research and clinical experience of the collected experts who have contributed. ~bill krill [...]

Interesting and helpful

This is an extremely helpful academic text, largely directed at medical and other clinicians diagnosing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the book is also helpful for laymen like myself, searching for a comprehensive understanding of the signs, symptoms and treatments for this diagnosis. The book covers the complexity of the disorder quite well. As noted in Chapter 2, on a Holistic approach to healing trauma and PTSD, "considerations concerning the psychological treatments for postraumatic stress syndromes (PTSS) are complex and multidimensional in nature. The treatment... involves contact with forces that inflict psychological injury and attack the human spirit and efforts to remain psychically whole." That's a perfect definition, in a nutshell. Question is, what to do about it. The book contains, lengthy discussions of the specific effects, and different manifestations of this disorder, an encyclopedic chapter on psychopharmacological therapies, and other clinical treatment methods. For my purposes, the chapter on childhood trauma is most interesting. This section covers a host of treatment modalities. My only complaint is that the section does not cover neurobiofeedback, a type of brain therapy and training which seems to hold a great deal of promise. I'm also skeptical about the limited number of treatments recommended for several modalities. But the book covers a broad number of issues, and will be helpful to clinicians and victims as well as the families of victims.