Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Treatments Effective?

A New Study Suggests that Psychological Therapies Improve Life for Children with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

post-traumatic stress disorderPost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is highly prevalent in children and adolescents who have experienced traumatic events such as child abuse, violence, road accidents or natural disasters. In children, post-traumatic stress disorder can lead to delayed development and behavioral problems. More generally, it is associated with anxiety, depression and suicidal tendencies. The aim of this review was to examine the effectiveness of all psychological therapies for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents.

In this first systematic review of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in young people age three to eighteen, researchers found that children diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder showed signs of improvement up to three months following treatment.  The psychological therapies used in the review were cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure-based, psychodynamic, narrative, supportive counseling, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

However, no systematic review analyzing the potential benefits of these therapies has been undertaken until now. This review published in The Cochrane Library focused on 14 studies that together involved 758 children aged 3-18 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to sexual abuse, violence, road accidents or natural disasters.

Most … Read More... “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Treatments Effective?”

Help Kids Make Sense Of A World Where Events Appear Unfair And Illogical

How We Can Help Kids Make Sense of Life’s Injustices Using Advice From A Dayton, Ohio Child Psychologist

help kids“Why did God take mommy to heaven?” asked Haley about the death of her mother due to a drug overdose.

Her dad said that God needed mom in heaven to help him, and that Haley should feel happy that God chose mom. That didn’t make much sense to this young child, so she began asking other people for their opinions.

I know what I was expected to tell her, but being asked questions without answers still leaves me uncomfortable.

Like the rest of us, Haley was trying to make some sense of a world where events often appear unfair, capricious and illogical. Similar questions come up frequently with kids during therapy.

“Why did my parents get a divorce?” “Why did my uncle abuse me?” “Why do other kids make fun of me?” “Why did I get cancer?”

We all adopt some view of the world that allows us to function in spite of life’s many apparent injustices and erratic events.

We may develop faith in an all-knowing God, and trust that the world is developing according to some divine plan.

Others affirm … Read More... “Help Kids Make Sense Of A World Where Events Appear Unfair And Illogical”

Do Challenging Children Cause a Bad Marriage?

challenging_children.jpgResearch published last month in Child Trends reported that happy marriages generally result in happy children. I was asked by a reader if children with any type of physical, emotional or developmental problems cause unhappy marriages.

Research has focused on parents raising children with such problems as Attention Deficit Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder and similar types of disabilities. The research findings have been ambiguous, with some studies finding a higher rate of divorce among such parents, and with others documenting no real differences. However, it’s clear that raising a special-needs child can result in a severe strain on a marriage. Here’s how successful marriages navigate these problems.

  1. Put your marriage first. A child with any type of disability demands more time and attention than other children. Good parents naturally want to meet those special needs, but that may result in neglecting your spouse. Healthy relationships take time and work, so it takes an extra effort by both spouses to be attentive to the needs of their marriage partner.
  2. Create a “no talk about children” zone. I recently learned about this technique from one of my clients. She found that virtually every conversation with her spouse revolved around some issue with
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Should Parental Alienation be Classified as a Mental Disorder?

pas_debate.jpgWe have blogged in the past about parental alienation and “Parental Alienation Syndrome.”  Currently, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a hot topic among the family law and psychiatric communities. The American Psychiatric Association is in the process of updating its formal list of medical disorders and, therefore, has to decide whether to include PAS in its new list of confirmed mental health disorders.

According to Wikipedia, “Parental Alienation Syndrome (abbreviated as PAS) is a term coined by Richard A. Gardner in the early 1980s to refer to what he describes as a disorder in which a child, on an ongoing basis, belittles and insults one parent without justification, due to a combination of factors, including indoctrination by the other parent (almost exclusively as part of a child custody dispute) and the child’s own attempts to denigrate the target parent”.

I suspect virtually all Family Law attorneys will tell you that, unfortunately, purposeful parental alienation is all too common in hotly contested custody actions. So, while there appears to be little debate on its existence, there is a bitter debate as to whether it represents a mental illness.  On top of that, there is concern that certain opposition to visiting with … Read More... “Should Parental Alienation be Classified as a Mental Disorder?”

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