Contributions to the Study of Violence and Trauma

Abstract

The prevention of future violence through engaging violent adolescents in multisystemic therapy and the treatment of trauma with exposure therapy are two of the most important scientific advances in the field of interpersonal violence in the past 20 years. A particularly significant methodological innovation is the development of reliable and valid measures of childhood and adult attachment because attachment deficits and their remediation are central to understanding and treating perpetrators of violence. In the coming decades, we need to refine existing treatment programs to make them effective for cases currently classified as treatment resistant. This will involve psychotherapy process research on the interaction between therapeutic mechanisms of change and unique personal vulnerabilities of treatment-resistant cases.

The 'antisocial' person: an insight in to biology, classification and current evidence on treatment

“…Though time consuming, intense psychotherapeutic programmes have shown benefit [69]. Rather than categorising ASPD as untreatable, spending more time with patients is shown to increase entry in to a treatment programme [70].…”

“…Its main focus is children and adolescents with socially deviant behaviour [69,78]. The core principles of MST include identifying problem behaviours in the broader systemic context (self, family, environment), using the strengths in each context for positive change, promoting responsible behaviour in the family, targeting specific problems with time limits and attempting to address many flaws in different systems that contribute to the problem behaviour (for example, family, school, neighbourhood, government authorities).…”