Children's mental health care in the 21st century: Eliminating the trauma burden

Contemporary child mental health care is compared unfavorably to its medical counterpart, which offers prevention and early intervention in addition to treatment of symptoms. Child trauma, broadly defined., is characterized as a ubiquitous, under-treated, primary source of psychopathology. Traumatic experiences which remain unintegrated accumulate as a trauma burden, leading to reactivity and impairment. Two recently developed trauma-focused interventions atre described: critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Combined with screening and early identification of traumatized children, CISD and EMDR can be used economically for widespread elimination of the trauma burden.

Journal

English

Ricky Greenwald

Greenwald, R. (1997). Children's mental health care in the 21st century: Eliminating the trauma burden. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry On-Line