This one-of-a-kind guide serves as a rich and essential resource for mental health professionals working with women whose lives have been shattered by the trauma of sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. The book presents a practical, step-by-step guide to implementing a group recovery program for female trauma survivors.

Victims of sexual assault experience their trauma in different ways, and often one path to recovery and healing is right for one person, but not right for another. While there are some general mental health effects of sexual violence, this book outlines and describes the impact of particular types of sexual violation. Whether the survivor has experienced childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault during adulthood, marital rape, sexual harassment, sex trafficking, or sexual violence within the military, they will find aspects of her experience in these pages. Once survivors understand the ways in which they have been affected, they are introduced to various pathways to surviving sexual violence and moving forward. The chapters provide case examples and specific activities which give a fuller description of the ways survivors can make use of the particular approaches, which include mind-body practices, counseling, group therapies, self-defense training, and others. Anyone who has been a victim of sexual violence, or knows and cares about someone who has, will find relief in these pages, which offer practical approaches to finding balance and healing.

Geller and Harris's accompanying history of both societal and psychiatric standards for women reveals that often even the prevailing conventions reinforced the perception that these women were "mad.".

A Practical Approach to Trauma: Empowering Interventions provides trauma counselors with effective guidelines that enhance skills and improve expertise in conducting empowering therapeutic interventions. Taking a practitioner's perspective, author Priscilla Dass-Brailsford focuses on practical application and skill building in an effort to understand the impact of extreme stress and violence on the human psyche. provides trauma counselors with effective guidelines that enhance skills and improve expertise in conducting empowering therapeutic interventions. Taking a practitioner's perspective, author Priscilla Dass-Brailsford focuses on practical application and skill building in an effort to understand the impact of extreme stress and violence on the human psyche.

"Rich with expert, practical guidance for therapists, this book presents an evidence-based group treatment approach for survivors of interpersonal trauma. This time-limited treatment is designed for clients who have achieved basic safety and stability in present-day life and who are ready to work on the more enduring ways that trauma has harmed their self-perception and relationships. Vivid case examples and transcripts illustrate the process of screening, selecting, and orienting group members and helping them craft and work toward individualized goals, while optimizing the healing power of group interactions. In a convenient large-size format, the book includes reproducible handouts, worksheets, and flyers"--Provided by publisher.

A Practical Approach to Trauma: Empowering Interventions provides trauma counselors with effective guidelines that enhance skills and improve expertise in conducting empowering therapeutic interventions. Taking a practitioner’s perspective, author Priscilla Dass-Brailsford focuses on practical application and skill building in an effort to understand the impact of extreme stress and violence on the human psyche. Key Features: Offers comprehensive coverage of trauma intervention: The wide coverage of the different levels of trauma— individual, community, institutional—and attention to the current theoretical and research literature makes this text the most comprehensive regarding trauma and its treatment. Highlights the intersection between trauma and culture: An ecological perspective focuses on the importance of viewing behavior within its social setting and examining the physical and psychosocial barriers to trauma recovery. Emphasizes the theme of "empowerment": Empowerment focuses on client strengths as the practitioner is encouraged to support clients towards resiliency. Provides an extensive historical background: The book examines multigenerational trauma experienced by several ethnic minority groups. Includes case studies and worksheets: Case studies gleaned from the author’s clinical experience provide a snapshot of the field and make the work of trauma come alive. Intended Audience: This is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on psychological trauma in the departments of Counseling, Psychology, Human Services, and Social Work. It is also a useful resource for practicing clinicians.

In this groundbreaking book, a leading clinical psychiatrist redefines how we think about and treat victims of trauma. A "stunning achievement" that remains a "classic for our generation." (Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., author of The Body Keeps the Score). Trauma and Recovery is revered as the seminal text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a broader political frame, Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war. Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most important psychiatry works to be published since Freud," Trauma and Recovery is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how we heal and are healed.