History of PTSD Treatment: How PTSD In Children Can Be Effectively Treated
PTSD in children is one of the most controversial but highly important aspects of dealing with trauma and associated medical conditions. It is extremely regrettable to note the the numbers of children in foster care who suffer abuse which leaves mental scars are not decreasing, despite all of the efforts being made by the authorities to screen potential foster parents and make sure that they are going to be suitable for the role. It is not only in foster care that these children are abused, of course, and the closer to home the incidences occur the more damage will be done.
There are clearly faults with the system which is set up to deal with situations where children are no longer able to live in their own homes, and these need to be addressed as the priority. Prevention is infinitely better than any cure, and the more children which can be kept out of abusive situations the better. The screening system for foster parents is still not tight enough, and the penalties which are applied to those found guilty of abusing children do not go nearly far enough. There also needs to be better monitoring of situations so that any problems which do occur can be dealt with more effectively, and also a way for children to find support when it is needed.
The problems of children are different from those of many of the other sufferers from PTSD, simply because they feel far more powerless and helpless in the face of abuse by adults. Even when soldiers are fighting in combat, they at least know that they are able to fight and able to have some influence on what happens to them and what there fate may be. The only military personnel who feel as helpless as children are those who are forced to live as prisoners of war, because their situation is equally helpless.
There are several techniques which are used to treat PTSD in children, so far with varying degrees of success. The most successful technique for treating all types of PTSD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but that is limited in ins effects when treating children. The reason for this is that it involves a lot of discipline in changing problem thoughts for harmless ones, and this discipline is often beyond a young mind paralyzed with fear. There is also the vitally important consideration that most abuse to children happens in domestic situations, and there are therefore far more likely to be incidents which link to the past.
Children will benefit from the application of a different approach, one which seeks to access the trauma and remove the emotional charge from it. This approach needs a great deal of care and expert supervision, but it has a far higher chance of helping the child come to terms with what has happened and to go on and lead a normal life. The idea is to actually encourage the child to relive the problematic memories within their mind, and to try to remove the emotional charges from them. This type of therapy is similar the therapy used in routine counseling.
There is no doubt that the techniques used for treating PTSD in children will evolve considerably in the coming years. Enough time needs to be taken to diagnose the problem and to find out exactly what the root causes are, and then the patient needs to be referred to the type of therapy which is going to have the greatest impact in their own individual case. It is highly unlikely that there will ever be a one size fits all solution for this type of problem, as there are many factors involved in treating PTSD in children.
How PTSD Treatment Is Continuing To Evolve – History of PTSD Treatment
PTSD treatment is needed more than ever in an age where military personnel are returning from combat with extreme mental scars from the ordeal they have gone through. There are also many cases of post traumatic stress disorder among the civilian population, and many of those are children who have never had a settled home or a chance to be free from abusive treatment they have suffered at the hands of the adults who have power over them. Therapy to relieve the symptoms and to treat the underlying condition is becoming more effective, but there is a long way still to go.
One of the greatest difficulties in devising treatments for PTSD is that the exact causes of the condition are not yet known. It is known, of course, that a series of traumatic incidents can cause PTSD and then make it progressively worse, but why do two people in exactly the same situation react completely differently? There are many theories, some of which are highly likely to be accurate at least to some degree as there are statistics to back them up. A good example is the belief that part of the cause is hereditary, as having a twin in the same situation has proven to be a highly significant risk factor.
It is also likely that different treatments will work best with different types of patients. Those who come back from war situations with traumas and PTSD are not likely to encounter anything in their daily civilian life which will make a direct obvious link. Of course, there can be a kind of link made through any insignificant factor, such as someone using a sentence which is the same as one used during the experience, but direct links are rare. There is therefore no real need to try to relive the experience, and the most successful therapy does not do this.
The opposite will apply to children, who may benefit from a different type of PTSD treatment. As most abusive acts which are committed against children will happen in a domestic situation instead of a foreign field on the other side of the world, there is a far greater chance of a direct link to negative experiences being made. Treatments for children need to emphasize mentally reliving the experience and trying to remove the negative emotional charge from it, however difficult and painful this may be.
The most successful treatment history for PTSD at the present time is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and this is proving especially effective at treating those coming home from military service. The therapy is a relatively simple one to understand, but it does require great vigilance to be able to put it into practice. Every time the patient has a thought or feeling which causes a reaction, they need to substitute an alternative. This may sound easy but it is not, because it effectively involves not thinking about something. With practice, the incidence of the troublesome thoughts will become less and less.
There are many experimental treatments for PTSD which use the completely opposite approach. They involve deliberately trying to recreate the traumatic experience within the mind so that it can be brought to the surface and dealt with. This approach is obviously fraught with danger if it is not carried out under strictly controlled conditions, but it does have the potential to remove negative emotional charges from the memories completely. Using this approach with children is likely to prove beneficial as they constantly have to face situations similar to the ones which caused the difficulties in the first place.
You can also find treatments for PTSD which would be considered to be on the fringe of medical practice, if not completely outside it. One of these is the Emotional Freedom Technique, about which extraordinary claims are made. It is too early to say whether or not any of these claims are justified, as the technique is in its infancy. Even the founder and developer of the system is constantly refining both the technique itself and the way in which it is taught. Assisting veterans is one of the claims specifically made in the promotional literature, and these claims are both explicit and extreme.
It is certain that there will be new developments in PTSD treatment as time passes. While every treatment will need to follow either the system of replacing thoughts and avoiding them, or of deliberately accessing them to try to remove the emotional charge, the way in which this can be done has many variations. If you know someone who has this condition, it will definitely be a good idea to carry out some deep research from time to time. Some of the treatments which can help are unlikely to be reported in the mainstream media, so search deeper for new PTSD treatment on the History of PTSD .
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