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| HOME > FOR FAMILIES > DISORDERS > POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER | |||
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Additional information about child and adolescent PTSD is available from: National Institute of Mental Health American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry For more information, see the fact sheet on PTSD, located at the National Center for PTSD. More Links...
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network For information on treatments for PTSD that are available through CARE-NET, see Studies.
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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder that may develop following exposure to an extreme traumatic event. Often, people with PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of the traumatic event. Examples of traumatic incidents include: kidnapping, serious accidents such as car, train, or plane wrecks, natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes or hurricanes, violent attacks such as mugging, rape, or torture or being abused. back to top The person with PTSD may experience sleep problems, depression, feeling detached or numb, or being easily startled. They may lose interest in things that they usually enjoyed and have difficulty feeling affectionate. People may sometimes become extremely irritable or have violent outbursts. Going places or seeing things that remind them of the traumatic event may be very troubling, and so they may avoid those places or situations. Anniversaries of the traumatic event are often very difficult. Some individuals with PTSD repeatedly "relive" the trauma in the form of nightmares, disturbing memories, experience "flashbacks," or intrusive images of the traumatic event. Regular everyday events may trigger the flashback. The "flashback" may come in the form of images, sounds, smells, or feelings. The person experiencing a flashback may lose touch with reality for brief or longer periods of time (dissociation). The person may experience dissociation that lasts from a few seconds to several hours, or even days, during which the components of the event are relived and the person may believe the traumatic event is happening all over again. Not every individual who experiences a traumatic event will go on to develop full symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some individuals will have no symptoms at all. The likelihood of developing this disorder may increase as the intensity of and physical proximity to the stressor increases. back to top For some some common questions and answers about PTSD go to Facts About Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a NIMH fact sheet. For more FAQs, go to the National Center for PTSD. back to top Trauma-Focused CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) Dr. Judy Cohen and Dr. Anthony Mannarino direct a child psychiatric outpatient treatment clinic for traumatized children located in an academically-affiliated urban hospital. Much of the program’s early efforts had been devoted to developing and empirically testing individual psychosocial treatments for sexually abused children and their non-offending parents. These studies demonstrated that trauma-focused cognitive behavioral treatment (TF-CBT) is effective in decreasing a variety of psychological difficulties in these children (Cohen & Mannarino, 1996a, 1998). These interventions were also used successfully in this clinic with children who had been exposed to a variety of other types of traumatic events. Following the crash of USAir Flight 427 outside of Pittsburgh in 1994, the clinic had the opportunity to provide treatment to several children and parents who had lost loved ones in this disaster. This led to the development of a group-focused treatment for child traumatic grief (Cohen et al, 2001a; Stubenbort et al, 2001). Based on the success of TF-CBT in decreasing PTSD, depressive, anxiety and behavioral symptoms in that study, Drs. Cohen and Mannarino were preparing a manual for the treatment of PTSD when the 9-11 terrorist attacks occurred. Almost simultaneously, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) was funded by SAMHSA, and its Traumatic Bereavement Task Force (TBTF) was formed to develop a coordinated response to children impacted by 9-11. This course of events allowed the doctors (benefiting from the suggestions of numerous therapists and researchers in New York and nationally) to complete the treatment manual (Cohen et al, 2001b) which was made available in November 2001.This individual treatment model is currently being empirically evaluated in an open trial at the authors’ clinic, and in a randomized controlled trial in New York (Brown & Goodman, 2002)
The CBT for Childhood Traumatic Grief treatment model includes 16
treatment sessions. The therapist provides individual treatment to the
child and parent in 12 of these sessions, while the remaining 4 are used
for joint parent-child treatment sessions. Although the treatment is
manualized, therapist creativity and skill are critical for optimally
individualizing how the treatment is implemented. back to top The trauma-focused components of the CBT model include:
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