A Practical Approach to Trauma Empowering Interventions

A Practical Approach to Trauma: Empowering Interventions helps clinicians develop effective therapeutic skills and provides guidelines for delivering trauma-focused and empowering interventions. Taking a practitioner's perspective, Priscilla Dass-Brailsford focuses on practical application to increase clinical understanding of extreme stress and violence. The psychological and behavioral consequences of trauma are viewed as expressions of pain and efforts to cope with unacceptable environmental demands and stressors. Responses to traumatic experiences are not necessarily viewed as pathological but instead grounded in cultural systems of meaning-making. Dass-Brailsford discusses how the practitioner's responsibility is to locate and utilize the strength and resilience inherent within individuals, families, and communities impacted by trauma to empower them toward healing and recovery. The author's practical, skill-building approach is taken from her many years of working in the trauma field. The book begins with an overview of the field, which includes intergenerational and historical trauma, and proceeds to review and discuss individual, group, and community interventions. Current theoretical perspectives and methods that provide a paradigm for stage-appropriate, culture-based therapy, which can be integrated into existing therapeutic orientations, are outlined. Case vignettes based on the author's clinical experience provide a snapshot of the trauma field. In a climate where the demand for trauma-specific treatment has increased, this book serves as an ideal text for graduate courses on psychological trauma and a go-to guide for practicing clinicians.

Priscilla Dass-Brailsford, a graduate of Harvard University, is a clinical psychologist, professor, and faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University. She studies the effects of trauma, violence, abuse, and other stressful events, and she is particularly interested in whether individuals from historically oppressed or stigmatized groups experience unique stressors or exhibit culturally specific coping processes. Clinically, she has expertise in the treatment of psychological trauma. She is a PTSD expert for the judicial system and has testified in PTSD cases. She is an APA Fellow of Divisions 17, 29, 32, 35, 42, 45, and 56, and has held several APA positions including Past Chair of the Fellows and Multicultural Committee for APA's Trauma Division.