Practitioner Review: Posttraumatic stress disorder and its treatment in children and adolescents

Abstract

Important advances in understanding traumatic stress reactions in children and young people have been made in recent years. The aim of this review is to synthesise selected recent research findings, with a focus on their relevance to clinical practice. We therefore address: findings on the epidemiology of trauma exposure and PTSD; recent changes to diagnostic classification; implications for screening and assessment of traumatic stress reactions; and treatment outcome studies including interventions for acute and chronic PTSD, dissemination of effective treatments into community settings, and early interventions. We conclude with recommendations for clinical practice, and suggestions for future areas of research.

Editorial: The psychopathology p factor: will it revolutionise the science and practice of child and adolescent psychiatry?

“…This issue's highly informative practitioner review focuses on PTSD (Smith, Dalgleish, & Meiser‐Stedman, ). This review delivers, amongst many other things, a comprehensive overview of the effective treatments for PTSD within psychological interventions, which can include trauma‐focussed CBT, cognitive therapy for PTSD and prolonged exposure.…”

Five Applications of Narrative Exposure Therapy for Children and Adolescents Presenting With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders

“…Narrative exposure therapy (NET) is an evidence-based intervention to treat those who have PTSD and have experienced multiple potentially traumatic events; originally developed by Neuner, Schauer, and Elbert (11)(12)(13). Although trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy (TF-CBT) has the largest evidence-base for PTSD, these trials are not necessarily conducted on those who have experienced multiple traumatic events (14). NET is one of the 2018 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended interventions for the treatment of adult PTSD (15) with the large number of NET studies categorized and analyzed under the umbrella of TF-CBT interventions.…”

“…As a result of increasing interest in this area, we describe here the use of NET and its adaptation to five very different groups of young people with more complex PTSD and share the principles of practice and some of the ways it has been adapted to these situations. The aim of this paper is to encourage practitioners to explore opportunities to treat child populations with PTSD, especially as they poorly access mental health care (9,14). The cases below have been used as the young people gave consent for their cases to be shared.…”

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Children and Adolescents: Some Recent Research Findings

“…The first-line treatments encompass trauma-focused CBT (i.e., TF-CBT) [82,83] and Prolonged Exposure for Adolescents (i.e, PE-A) [84]. Traditionally, components of treatments include: psychoeducation about PTSD, affective modulation and cognitive processing, behavioral activation, relaxation skills, trauma narrative, in vivo mastery of trauma reminders, conjoint parent-child sessions, and future safety and development [85,86]. Furthermore, cognitive behavioral interventions for trauma in schools (CBITS) [87,88] and trauma and grief component therapy for adolescents (TGCT) [89] are also welcomed as efficient ways to treat traumatized youths mainly due to available resources of schools.…”