Understanding Traumatic Stress - Growth Through Experience

Traumatic events are a brutal interruption into a person's life. Ranging from road traffic accidents, through rape and sexual abuse, to disaster and war, such experiences may leave deep emotional scars. Understanding Traumatic Stress, written with both traumatized individuals and their families and friends in mind, looks at how to make sense of trauma. In particular, it explores how people may use narrative to find meaning in what has happened and to heal the interrupted story of their lives. Topics include; symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - intrusive recollections, denial, emotional numbing and hyperarousal, related disorders, such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, therapies, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and narrative techniques, the importance of social support, other treatments, such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), drug treatments and psychoanalysis, problems faced by carers, vicarious or secondary trauma, professional help - your GP, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. In this wise and comprehensive book, Dr Nigel Hunt and Sue McHale say it is possible to view trauma from an alternative perspective and to achieve psychological growth.