The Traumatized Brain


Book Description

Useful information and real hope for patients and families whose lives have been altered by traumatic brain injury. A traumatic brain injury is a life-changing event, affecting an individual’s lifestyle, ability to work, relationships—even personality. Whatever caused it—car crash, work accident, sports injury, domestic violence, combat—a severe blow to the head results in acute and, often, lasting symptoms. People with brain injury benefit from understanding, patience, and assistance in recovering their bearings and functioning to their full abilities. In The Traumatized Brain, neuropsychiatrists Drs. Vani Rao and Sandeep Vaishnavi—experts in helping people heal after head trauma—explain how traumatic brain injury, whether mild, moderate, or severe, affects the brain. They advise readers on how emotional symptoms such as depression, anxiety, mania, and apathy can be treated; how behavioral symptoms such as psychosis, aggression, impulsivity, and sleep disturbances can be addressed; and how cognitive functions like attention, memory, executive functioning, and language can be improved. They also discuss headaches, seizures, vision problems, and other neurological symptoms of traumatic brain injury. By stressing that symptoms are real and are directly related to the trauma, Rao and Vaishnavi hope to restore dignity to people with traumatic brain injury and encourage them to ask for help. Each chapter incorporates case studies and suggestions for appropriate medications, counseling, and other treatments and ends with targeted tips for coping. The book also includes a useful glossary, a list of resources, and suggestions for further reading.




The Body Keeps the Score


Book Description

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.




Traumatic Experience and the Brain


Book Description

Traumatic Experience and the Brain is the result of Dr. Dave Ziegler's three decades of experience with children traumatized by abuse and/or neglect. Containing almost 100 pages of new material, this newly revised and updated second edition details the effect of trauma on the developing brain, describing how it actually rewires one's perceptions of self, others, and the world. It is a book of hope for foster, natural, and adoptive parents of such "broken" children and the therapists, teachers and social workers who attempt to help them. Dave Ziegler, M.S., Ph.D., is the director of Jasper Mountain, a residential treatment program in Oregon for some of society's most damaged children.




Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain


Book Description

Explore interventions and treatment methods designed to help curb the alarming trend toward violence in today's youth! Written in jargon-free lucid prose, Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain: Neurologically Based Interventions for Troubled Children specifically shows how positive early experiences enhance brain development and how traumatic life experiences, especially child abuse and neglect, can affect a child's brain and behavior. Through carefully selected case studies, the book offers basic principles of treatment and a broad range of interventions that target the multiple symptoms and problems seen in children with a history of childhood trauma. Offering a new psychobiological model of child development, this book incorporates the influence of both genes and the environment and conceptualizes normal and pathological development in terms of common underlying processes. For readers concerned with promoting healthy development in children and helping children recover from childhood trauma, this engagingly written book describes exactly how a child's social/interpersonal environment can positively or negatively influence brain development. Throughout the book, the authors highlight the interrelationship between neurobiology and psychology. They present basic information about brain development and organization, describe exactly what is going on inside the brain at each stage of development, and illustrate these concepts through a detailed case study of a preschooler with severe problems in communicating and relating. They discuss the pernicious effects that traumatic stress has on brain and behavior, differentiating between simple and complex PTSD, and review the specific brain impairments currently attributed to a childhood history of maltreatment. Using their unique psychobiological perspective and illustrative case studies, the authors evaluate the principles and strategies of treatment, showing how relationships and experiences can mitigate the effects childhood trauma. After fleshing out the shocking cost to society of child maltreatment, the authors offer broad policy prescriptions that promote healthy development, including basic strategies for prevention and early intervention. Psychological Trauma and the Developing Brain: Neurologically Based Interventions for Troubled Children will show you: how interpersonal experience shapes brain development what is going on in the brain during the critical first six years how therapeutic relationships and interpersonal experience can promote emotional and cognitive development how childhood maltreatment can damage the brain and impair the developing mind what types of experiences and therapeutic strategies can mitigate the effects of childhood trauma what policy prescriptions, programs, and early intervention strategies can be implemented to promote healthy development




Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury


Book Description

In order to reduce the number of deaths from severe head injuries, systematic management is essential. This book is a practical, comprehensive guide to the treatment of patients (both adults and children) with such injuries, from the time of initial contact through to the rehabilitation center. Sections are devoted to prehospital treatment, admission and diagnostics, acute management, and neurointensive care and rehabilitation. Evidence-based recommendations are presented for each diagnostic and therapeutic measure, and tips, tricks, and pitfalls are highlighted. Throughout, the emphasis is on the provision of sound clinical advice that will maximize the likelihood of an optimal outcome. Helpful flowcharts designed for use in daily routine are also provided. The authors are all members of the Scandinavian Neurotrauma Committee and have extensive practical experience in the areas they write about.




Life With a Traumatic Brain Injury


Book Description

"A collection of short stories originally published in The Huffington Post."




Trauma and Memory


Book Description

Designed for psychotherapists and their clients, Peter Levine's latest best-seller continues his groundbreaking exploration of the central role of the body in processing—and healing—trauma. With foreword by Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score In Trauma and Memory, bestselling author Dr. Peter Levine (creator of the Somatic Experiencing approach) tackles one of the most difficult and controversial questions of PTSD/trauma therapy: Can we trust our memories? While some argue that traumatic memories are unreliable and not useful, others insist that we absolutely must rely on memory to make sense of past experience. Building on his 45 years of successful treatment of trauma and utilizing case studies from his own practice, Dr. Levine suggests that there are elements of truth in both camps. While acknowledging that memory can be trusted, he argues that the only truly useful memories are those that might initially seem to be the least reliable: memories stored in the body and not necessarily accessible by our conscious mind. While much work has been done in the field of trauma studies to address "explicit" traumatic memories in the brain (such as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks), much less attention has been paid to how the body itself stores "implicit" memory, and how much of what we think of as "memory" actually comes to us through our (often unconsciously accessed) felt sense. By learning how to better understand this complex interplay of past and present, brain and body, we can adjust our relationship to past trauma and move into a more balanced, relaxed state of being. Written for trauma sufferers as well as mental health care practitioners, Trauma and Memory is a groundbreaking look at how memory is constructed and how influential memories are on our present state of being.




The Time Cure


Book Description

In his landmark book, The Time Paradox, internationally known psychologist Philip Zimbardo showed that we can transform the way we think about our past, present, and future to attain greater success in work and in life. Now, in The Time Cure, Zimbardo has teamed with clinicians Richard and Rosemary Sword to reveal a groundbreaking approach that helps those living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to shift their time perspectives and move beyond the traumatic past toward a more positive future. Time Perspective Therapy switches the focus from past to present, from negative to positive, clearing the pathway for the best yet to come: the future. It helps PTSD sufferers pull their feet out of the quicksand of past traumas and step firmly on the solid ground of the present, allowing them to take a step forward into a brighter future. Rather than viewing PTSD as a mental illness the authors see it as a mental injury—a normal reaction to traumatic events—and offer those suffering from PTSD the healing balm of hope. The Time Cure lays out the step-by-step process of Time Perspective Therapy, which has proven effective for a wide range of individuals, from veterans to survivors of abuse, accidents, assault, and neglect. Rooted in psychological research, the book also includes a wealth of vivid and inspiring stories from real-life PTSD sufferers—effective for individuals seeking self-help, their loved ones, therapists and counselors, or anyone who wants to move forward to a brighter future.




Headstrong


Book Description

She didn’t see the hammer. For a fraction of a second JoAnne Jones saw a young black face, framed by a black hoodie, and then she descended into a place where she felt and saw nothing. Jones survived this sudden assault by a stranger, but it left her with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), fractured hands, and PTSD. Headstrong tells the story of how she learned to live with the daily challenges of TBI. It brings the reader into a life traumatized by violence and set in the context of a society full of violence and vocal, visible white supremacists. Woven throughout Jones’s account are the stories of how medical professionals, friends, family, and strangers became a foundation strong enough to hold her during the worst of times, and to give her the buoyancy to find a path toward hope.




Brain-Switch


Book Description

ATTENTION PSYCHIATRISTS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, SOCIAL WORKERS, LICENSED PROFESSIONAL COUNSELORS AND MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS: Do you know that there is a powerful new therapeutic process that will heal your PTSD clients' traumatic memories quickly? And is far less stressful than Prolonged Exposure Therapy? It can also be used effectively with many other clinical issues. It works within the short-term cognitive behavioral therapy model and can be easily learned without requiring certification. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been increased public awareness of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), present both in active duty military men and women as well as in veterans. Returning from combat or deployments in a war zone, many serving in our military have highly traumatic memories from witnessing the really horrible things that happen in war. Althouh psychiatrists and psychotherapists have been treating victims of PTSD for many years--from sexual assault, fires, robberies, car accidents, shootings, natural disasters and other traumas--the surge of people suffering from trauma related to our recent wars has given new impetus to finding innovative ways to treat the symptoms of PTSD. With BRAIN-SWITCH, a single traumatic episode or nightmare can usually be healed in one session. Someone with many different traumas may require many BRAIN-SWITCHES, but therapy is significantly shortened. BRAIN-SWITCH not only works with PTSD--but also with anxiety, depression, phobias, belief changes, self-esteem problems, rejection, abandonment and numerous other clinical issues that ciients present when seeking psychotherapy. This book describes the BRAIN-SWITCH process in detail and then describes numerous case examples (including both trauma and non-trauma applications). Written by two highly experienced clinical psychologists (and developed by one of them ), BRAIN-SWITCH tells you everything you need to know to begin using this dramatically effective process that is revolutionizing psychotherapy.