Treating Trauma: Relationship-Based Psychotherapy with Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults

Treating Trauma: Relationship-Based Psychotherapy with Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults presents a theoretically based and empirically supported framework for work with traumatized children, youth, and young adults who have spent time in foster care. It offers vivid examples of cases from the work of clinicians of A Home Within, a national non-profit focused on meeting the emotional needs of current and former foster youth. These nine case studies illustrate the vital role that relationships play in helping overcome the trauma of chronic, unexpected, and unexplained losses. They describe the work with clients, the collateral work, and also the therapists’ personal experiences of treating this vulnerable population.

This work also explores the impact of secondary trauma on those working in an around the foster care system and addresses ways that therapists and others vulnerable to vicarious trauma can protect themselves, as well as their clients. In particular, three chapters examine the power of peer consultation in sustaining therapeutic work with vulnerable and traumatized populations.

Methods of integrating evidence-based approaches into treatment of youth with multiple mental health problems and unavailable parents are discussed and explored. Essential elements of effective mental health interventions with traumatized foster youth are presented and illustrated.