It takes a village: Caring for a traumatized art student

One of the fascinating developments in mental health care in the last decade has been the appearance of specific psychotherapies for various psychiatric illnesses. Perhaps the best known of these is dialetical behavior therapy (DBT), pioneered by Linehan and colleagues for borderline personality disorder and consisting of rigorous group and individual cognitive-behavioral therapy within an empathetic and validating psychotherapy setting. Another is eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), described by Shapiro and coworkers as a treatment for PTSD and other anxiety disorders.The following case study involves a patient in a team-treatment setting who benefitted significantly from the use of DBT and EMDR, as well as a complex psychopharmacology regimen, after receiving an extensive battery of psychological tests. The clinicians who were involved with the patient will discuss the aspects of her care for which they were responsible. We do not endeavor to isolate which modality was the "right" one; rather, we are looking at the manner in which each potentiated the others.

Journal

English

Stuart Lustig
Aimee Smrz
Patricia Sladen
T. D. Sellers
Sondra Hellman

Lustig, S., Smrz, A., Sladen, P., Sellers, T. D., & Hellman, S. (2000, January-February). It takes a village: Caring for a traumatized art student. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 7(5), 290-298. doi:10.3109/hrp.7.5.290