Childhood Trauma: Types, Effects, and Treatments, 2nd Edition

Course overview

This intermediate-level course provides a foundation for understanding the types of trauma children experience, including both acute and chronic traumatic events, and how trauma affects the child's affective, physiological, attentional, behavioral, and relational development and abilities. Participants will learn about the factors affecting a child's response to trauma, including intrapersonal factors, family and systemic factors, cumulative traumatic exposure, and cultural considerations. The course discusses posttraumatic play and reenactment and explores how children manifest their distress posttrauma. Several kinds of trauma are discussed and case vignettes are presented to illustrate the ways traumatic experiences may manifest in children. Trauma-informed care and treatments are detailed, such as psychological first aid, trauma systems therapy, child-parent psychotherapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, play and expressive therapies, and case management. This course is intended for social workers, mental health counselors, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, nurses, school personnel, and other healthcare providers working with trauma-exposed youth. The course may also be helpful to clinicians working with adult clients whose symptoms stem from childhood trauma