Trauma Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

¶ … functional casebook and extensively approved text provides valuable, inventive approaches for aiding children who experienced traumatic life situations like parental divorce or death, neglect and abuse, natural calamities and violence at school or in the community. Inter-personal aggression suffered during childhood has often been proven to be linked to negative psychosocial effects; risk of negative effects increases with increase in exposures (Felitti et al., 1998; Teicher, Samson, Polcari and McGreenery, 2006). Also, unfortunately, it is not uncommon for children to come across one or more kinds of indirect or direct victimization before they turn eighteen. In fact, one study discovered that kids who report to being victims of sexual abuse very likely experienced other forms of victimization, too (Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005).

The article "Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Child Sexual Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence" reveals the likely impacts of child exposure to domestic and sexual abuse, offering a summary of a therapeutic strategy, which has proven to be effective in assisting children in overcoming shock over such exposure. Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) implementation is described through a case study on a girl aged six years, who experienced sexual abuse as well as domestic violence exposure (Neubauer, et al., 2007).

This paper will objectively review the article, "Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Child Sexual Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence" by Neubauer et.al. (2007)

Review

The authors shed light on some adverse impacts of violence- exposure in childhood and how Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), used earlier for victims of sexual abuse, is currently being employed in treating domestic violence and other kinds of trauma. TF-CBT model offers psycho-education, encouraging coping skills development and creation of a traumatic experience account or any other type of moderate exposure activity (such as painting, drawing, composing a poem or song, visualization, reenacting with play things, etc.) for aiding a child in reducing his/her anxiety with regards to confronting distressing memories of violent experiences and voicing his/her feelings and thoughts. Often, children are gradually emboldened to shift from discussing the least upsetting traumatic occurrences to experiences that cause them most distress (Neubauer, et al., 2007).

This particular section of the book gives a detailed description of a case of sexual abuse experienced by 6-year-old, Mary, the offender being her father. The authors highlight the issue subtly, yet very unassumingly; strong recommendations were made (particularly CF-CBT) for helping Mary cope with this traumatic experience. It caused a very alarming change in Mary; her mother, Linda stated that following persistent exposure to domestic abuse, Mary began behaving in a non-compliant manner at school. She sometimes used vocabulary similar to that used by her father (that is, words such as 'moron' while addressing others). Her mother also observed that after the birth of John, Mary's little brother, Mary was initially happy and cooperated with her mother in caring for him (i.e., she brought bottles or diapers or toys for her baby brother). More recently, however, Mary began behaving jealously, repeatedly hitting John or verbally abusing him with names similar to the ones used by her father while verbally abusing her mother (Neubauer, et al., 2007)."