Trauma results in a wide variety of human unhappiness. In parallel, treatment of the consequences of trauma ranges from drugs, to single session psychological techniques, to management and cognitive therapies, to psychotherapies which take years. Some therapies deal with individuals, others with groups, some with children, and others with adults. With such a multiplicity of options, it can be difficult to make sense of the variety of manifestations and treatments. This work aims to clarify the situation by offering tools to conceptualize and treat a range of symptoms and illnesses, and to replace them with equally well conceptualized fulfillment alternatives. It is geared towards traumatologists, psychologists, counsellors, and social workers who help those who have suffered assault, bereavement, sexual abuse, or disasters. Upper level undergraduates students, graduate students and professors in trauma, loss, and bereavement.

Group Treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorders is a collection written by renowned PTSD experts who provide group treatment to trauma survivors. The book reviews the state-of-the-art applications of group therapy for survivors of trauma such as: rape victims, combat veterans, adult survivors of childhood abuse, motor vehicle accident survivors, trauma survivors with co-morbid substance abuse, survivors of disaster, families of trauma survivors, homicide witnesses and survivors, and disaster relief workers. This book a unique contribution to the field. Each chapter provides a detailed and comprehensive description of state-of-the-art group treatment and artfully combines scholarly review with a step-by-step summary of treatment rationale and methods. Furthermore, the book covers a wide scope, typically found only in large, multi-volume compendia. Group Treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorders is ideal for clinicians, aspiring clinicians, researchers and educators. It provides a unique and eminently readable summary of group therapy applied to increasingly recognized clinical populations.

How is an individual to lead a comfortable, productive existence when he or she was never taught the skills necessary for effective living? Adult survivors of child abuse often face this dilemma. Instead of being nurtured as children and taught life-skills by their caregivers, child abuse survivors were subjected to a daily regimen of coercive control, contempt, rejection and emotional unresponsiveness. It is not surprising, therefore, that many survivors encounter difficulty adjusting from this type of damaging childhood atmosphere to one in which they have autonomy. This book addresses the particular problems associated with treating adult survivors of child abuse. Until now, psychotherapy for child abuse survivors often centered on the trauma of their abuse experiences. However, survivors frequently reveal a history suggesting it was not abuse trauma alone that created their difficulties, but growing up essentially alone - without the consistent emotional support and guidance needed for development of effective functioning. This book presents an alternative to trauma-focused treatment that, though effective for treatment of other forms of trauma, can induce deteriorated rather than improved functioning in survivors of prolonged childhood maltreatment. The contextual therapy presented in Not Trauma Alone delineates a psychotherapeutic approach that emphasizes helping survivors develop the capacities for effective functioning that were never transmitted to them during their formative years. Detailed descriptions of the methods and interventions comprising contextual therapy are included in this critical book for all mental health professionals, clinicians, academics, and students in the field.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Westerners watched those who had survived the era of Soviet trauma emerge into what we hoped would be the exhilarating light of freedom. What we have witnessed, however, is a slow and painful process of progression and regression, of hope and disillusionment, of unexpected psychological barriers: invisible walls that block the progress we had hoped for. In Beyond Invisible Walls, East European therapists, themselves, draw a compelling picture of the waves of trauma that their people endured, the institutions of trauma that remained well after Stalin's era, and their impact on survivors and their families. They describe the psychological remnants of those years: walls that confine people by unconsciously preserving old adaptations to political terror, walls that divide one part of the mind from another, and walls that rise between one generation and the next. These therapists' stories allow us a striking glimpse into how patients' trauma evokes the therapists' own wounds; how both speaker and empathic listener find their way to a healing process, how the two begin to dismantle these invisible walls.

This timely and authoritative two-volume set includes hundreds of signed entries by experts in the field of traumatology, exploring traditional subjects as well as emerging ideas, as well as providing further resources for study and exploration.

List of Tables. List of Figures. Series Editor's Foreword. Preface. Prologue. Acknowledgements. What It Means to Be a Parent After a Child Had Died. The "Mothers Now Childless" Study: Research Design and Findings. When a Child Dies, Does Grieving Ever End? One Death - A Thousand Strands of Pain: Finding the Meaning of Suffering. Bereaved Parents' Search for Understanding: The Paradox of Healing. Confronting a Spiritual Crisis: Where is God When Bad Things Happen? Confronting an Existential Crisis: Can Life Have Purpose Again? Deciding to Survive: Reaching Bottom - Climbing Up. Remembering With Love: Bereaved Parents as Biographer. Reaching Out to Help Others: Wounded Healers. Reinventing the Self: Parents Ask, "Who Are We Now?". The Legacy of Loss. References. Resources. Appendices. Index.