Listening to a small child describe a parent's murder can tax the most seasoned professional. Cases of physical and sexual abuse where trauma was deliberately inflicted can particularly challenge a practitioner's defenses.Treating Traumatized Children is the first handbook to provide specific guidance and tools for treating children who have been traumatized by physical and sexual abuse, disaster, divorce, or witnessing violent events. This book will provide helping professionals with a clear blueprint for assessing the impact of trauma and developing specific treatment plans.Beverly James, a specialist in evaluating and treating traumatized children, outlines creative exercises and techniques that will enable clinicians to join with children in slowly and carefully reviewing their experiences and helping them understand and accept their feelings related to the trauma. Art, play, and drama techniques, among others, are presented in a sophisticated yet straightforward style, useful to clinicians with specialized training in such techniques or those using them for the first time.

While recent years have seen a vast increase in the literature on adult trauma, interest in childhood trauma has only recently started to gain momentum, encouraging new research and evidence-based interventions. Here the editors have brought together an international list of contributors to look at both innovative and established treatments of trauma in a range of contexts, and provide up-to-date coverage of what is on offer in prevention, assessment, treatment and research. Divided into three parts, main topics discussed are: risk and protective factors for the development of post-traumatic disorders conceptualizations of resilience and suggestions for making them operational evidence-based treatment models for traumatized children Treating Traumatized Children provides professionals with an up-to-date international perspective on the subject, as well as helping professionals and researchers develop future treatments based on current evidence.

This is the authoritative guide to conducting trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), a systematic, evidence-based treatment for traumatized children and their families. Provided is a comprehensive framework for assessing posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and other symptoms; developing a flexible, individualized treatment plan; and working collaboratively with children and parents to build core skills in such areas as affect regulation and safety. Specific guidance is offered for responding to different types of traumatic events, with an entire section devoted to grief-focused components. Useful appendices feature resources, reproducible handouts, and information on obtaining additional training. TF-CBT has been nationally recognized as an exemplary evidence-based program. See also the edited volume Trauma-Focused CBT for Children and Adolescents: Treatment Applications for more information on tailoring TF-CBT to children's varying developmental levels and cultural backgrounds.

Today more pediatric therapists are centering their work on the parent-child relationship and are turning to parents as a primary modality in solving children's problems. Parent-Focused Child Therapy: Attachment, Identification, and Reflective Functions is an edited collection, drawing from leading psychotherapists with specialties in family therapy. Carrol Wachs and Linda Jacobs tap into the current literature on the efficacy of working with parents in therapy situations. The collected essays in this book, from renowned psychotherapists, focus on identifying and evaluating a variety of approaches and their effects on standard questions of attachment, identity, and reflection in dealing with children in therapy. Parent-Focused Child Therapy is especially attractive given its currency, integrating relational theory, attachment theory and infant research.

Harvey Schwartz's territory is the severe end of the child sexual abuse continuum, where victims' experiences are so unthinkable and their adaptations so bizarre that the rest of us are tempted to pronounce them fictions-whereupon we become complicit by subverting the survivors' struggles to heal. Schwartz synthesizes trauma theory and relational psychoanalysis to make sense of perpetrator, collaborator, and victim pathologies, and exposes the tortuous double-binds of therapy for and with dissociative patients. His office is the last stop on a kind of underground treatment railroad; his say-it-isn't-so case material reverberates throughout.

Treating Child Sex Offenders and Victims is a practical manual designed to assist mental health professionals in the effective treatment of both victims and offenders through the development of specialized skills. The author discusses methods of treatment of offenders and includes an assessment battery, which measures their sexual attitudes. She also addresses ways of treating victims and minimizing trauma within the legal system. The volume will thus be invaluable for all mental health professionals who wish to learn effective treatment of the victims and the perpetrators of child sexual abuse.