Posttraumatic growth is an area in which investigations are now being undertaken in many different parts of the world. The view that individuals can be changed--sometimes in radically good ways--by ...their struggle with trauma is ancient and widespread. However, the systematic focus by scholars and clinicians on the possibilities for growth from the struggle with crisis is relatively recent. There are now a growing number of studies and scholarly papers on the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of posttraumatic growth, and there are also theoretical models that can help guide the research further. It is clear, however, that this phenomenon is not yet well understood.The Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice provides both clinicians and researchers with a comprehensive and up-to-date view of what has been done so far. In addition, it uses the foundations of what has been done to provide suggestions for the next useful steps to take in understanding posttraumatic growth. The book offers contributions of important and influential scholars representing a wide array of perspectives of posttraumatic growth. This volume serves as an impetus for additional work, both in the academic aspects and in the possibilities for clinical applications of posttraumatic growth.This Handbook will appeal to students, practitioners, and researchers working in a broad array of disciplines and human services.
Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Institute of Medicine; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Committee on Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
12/2007
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Mental disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), constitute an important health care need of veterans, especially those recently separated from service. Treatment of Posttraumatic ...Stress Disorder: An Assessment of the Evidence takes a systematic look the efficacy of pharmacologic and psychological treatment modalities for PTSD on behalf of the Department of Veterans Affairs. By reviewing existing studies in order to draw conclusions about the strength of evidence on several types of treatment, the Committee on the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder found that many of these studies were faulty in design and performance, and that relatively few of these studies have been conducted in populations of veterans, despite suggestions that civilian and veteran populations respond differently to various types of treatment. The committee also notes that the evidence is scarce on the acceptability, efficacy, or generalizability of treatment in ethnic and cultural minorities, as few studies stratified results by ethnic background.
Despite challenges in the consistency, quality, and depth of research, the committee found the evidence sufficient to conclude the efficacy of exposure therapies in treating PTSD. The committee found the evidence inadequate to determine efficacy of different types of pharmacotherapies, of three different psychotherapy modalities, and of psychotherapy delivered in group formats. The committee also made eight critical recommendations, some in response to the VA's questions related to recovery and the length and timing of PTSD treatment, and others addressing research methodology, gaps in evidence and funding issues.
Over the past hundred years, average life expectancy in America has nearly doubled, due largely to scientific and medical advances, but also as a consequence of safer working conditions, a heightened ...awareness of the importance of diet and health, and other factors. Yet while longevity is celebrated as an achievement in modern civilization, the longer people live, the more likely they are to succumb to chronic, terminal illnesses. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47 years, with a majority of American deaths attributed to influenza, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. In 2000, the average life expectancy was nearly 80 years, and for too many people, these long lifespans included cancer, heart failure, Lou Gehrig's disease, AIDS, or other fatal illnesses, and with them, came debilitating pain and the loss of a once-full and often independent lifestyle. In this compelling and provocative book, noted legal scholar Howard Ball poses the pressing question: is it appropriate, legally and ethically, for a competent individual to have the liberty to decide how and when to die when faced with a terminal illness? At Liberty to Die charts how, the right of a competent, terminally ill person to die on his or her own terms with the help of a doctor has come deeply embroiled in debates about the relationship between religion, civil liberties, politics, and law in American life. Exploring both the legal rulings and the media frenzies that accompanied the Terry Schiavo case and others like it, Howard Ball contends that despite raging battles in all the states where right to die legislation has been proposed, the opposition to the right to die is intractable in its stance. Combining constitutional analysis, legal history, and current events, Ball surveys the constitutional arguments that have driven the right to die debate.
This book addresses the specifics of counselling clients who have suffered major trauma, whether recently or in the past, and includes 18 detailed case examples together with transcripts of sessions. ...It is unique in covering the diagnosis and treatment of the full spectrum of post-traumatic states. This fully updated Third Edition includes the needs of special populations: children/adolescents, refugees and those in pain are also addressed. Additional material includes a new PTSD screening inventory and a counselling competence scale.
Since the 1970s, understanding of the effects of trauma, including flashbacks and withdrawal, has become widespread in the United States. As a result Americans can now claim that the phrase ...posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is familiar even if the American Psychiatric Association's criteria for diagnosis are not. As embedded as these ideas now are in the American mindset, however, they are more widely applicable, this volume attempts to show, than is generally recognized. The essays inCulture and PTSDtrace how trauma and its effects vary across historical and cultural contexts.
Culture and PTSDexamines the applicability of PTSD to other cultural contexts and details local responses to trauma and the extent they vary from PTSD as defined in the American Psychiatric Association'sDiagnostic and Statistical Manual. Investigating responses in Peru, Indonesia, Haiti, and Native American communities as well as among combat veterans, domestic abuse victims, and adolescents, contributors attempt to address whether PTSD symptoms are present and, if so, whether they are a salient part of local responses to trauma. Moreover, the authors explore other important aspects of the local presentation and experience of trauma-related disorder, whether the Western concept of PTSD is known to lay members of society, and how the introduction of PTSD shapes local understandings and the course of trauma-related disorders.
By attempting to determine whether treatments developed for those suffering PTSD in American and European contexts are effective in global settings of violence or disaster,Culture and PTSDquestions the efficacy of international responses that focus on trauma.
Contributors:Carmela Alcántara, Tom Ball, James K. Boehnlein, Naomi Breslau, Whitney Duncan, Byron J. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Jesse H. Grayman, Bridget M. Haas, Devon E. Hinton, Erica James, Janis H. Jenkins, Hanna Kienzler, Brandon Kohrt, Roberto Lewis-Fernández, Richard J. McNally, Theresa D. O'Nell, Duncan Pedersen, Nawaraj Upadhaya, Carol M. Worthman, Allan Young
Every day, thousands of people quietly face decisions as agonizing as those made famous in the Terri Schiavo case. Throughout that controversy, all kinds of people--politicians, religious leaders, ...legal and medical experts--made emphatic statements about the facts and offered even more certain opinions about what should be done. To many, courts were either ordering Terri's death by starvation or vindicating her constitutional rights. Both sides called for simple answers.If That Ever Happens to Medetails why these simple answers were not right for Terri Schiavo and why they are not right for end-of-life decisions today.Lois Shepherd looks behind labels like "starvation," "care," or "medical treatment" to consider what care and feeding really mean, when feeding tubes might be removed, and why disability groups, the faithful, and even the dying themselves often suggest end-of-life solutions that they might later regret. For example, Shepherd cautions against living wills as a pat answer. She provides evidence that demanding letter-perfect documents can actually weaken, rather than bolster, patient choice.The actions taken and decisions made during Terri Schiavo's final years will continue to have repercussions for thousands of others--those nearing death, their families, health-care professionals, attorneys, lawmakers, clergy, media, researchers, and ethicists.If That Ever Happens to Meis an excellent choice for anyone interested in end-of-life law, policy, and ethics--particularly readers seeking a deeper understanding of the issues raised by Terri Schiavo's case.
As journalists in Iraq and other hot spots around the world continue to face harrowing dangers and personal threats, neuropsychiatrist Anthony Feinstein offers a timely and important exploration into ...the psychological damage of those who, armed only with pen, tape recorder, or camera, bear witness to horror. Based on a series of recent studies investigating the emotional impact of war on the profession, Journalists under Fire breaks new ground in the study of trauma-related disorders.
Feinstein opens with an overview of the life-threatening hazards war reporters face—abductions, mock executions, the deaths of close colleagues—and discusses their psychological consequences: post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, deterioration of personal relationships, and substance abuse. In recounting the experiences of reporters who encounter trauma on the job, Feinstein observes that few adequate support systems are in place for them. He tells the stories of media veterans who have seen it all, only to find themselves and their employers blindsided by psychological aftershocks.
The book explores the biological and psychological factors that motivate journalists to take extraordinary risks. Feinstein looks into the psyches of freelancers who wade into war zones with little or no financial backing; he examines the different stresses encountered by women working in a historically male-dominated profession; and he probes the effects of the September 11 attacks on reporters who thought they had sworn off conflict reporting. His interviews with many of this generation's greatest reporters, photographers, and videographers often reveal extraordinary resilience in the face of adversity.
Journalists under Fire is a look behind the public persona of war journalists at a time when the profession faces unprecedented risk. Plucking common threads from disparate stories, Feinstein weaves a narrative that is as fascinating to read as it is sobering to contemplate. What emerges are unique insights into lives lived dangerously.
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Psychoanalysis, History, and Radical Ethics: Learning to Hear explores the importance of listening, being able to speak, and those who are silenced, from a psychoanalytic perspective. In ...particular, it focuses on those voices silenced either collectively or individually by trauma, culture, discrimination and persecution, and even by the history of psychoanalysis. Drawing on lessons from philosophy and history as well as clinical vignettes, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the role of trauma in creating silence, and the importance for psychoanalysts of learning to hear those silenced voices.
As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, ...however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts.
This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Local Histories/Global Designsis an extended argument about the "coloniality" of power by one of the most innovative Latin American and Latino scholars. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, ...such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. He explores the crucial notion of "colonial difference" in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which he calls "border thinking." Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling in the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. His concept of "border gnosis," or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding.
In a new preface that discussesLocal Histories/Global Designsas a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History, Mignolo connects his argument with the unfolding of history in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
