One treatment option for children’s trauma is eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, or EMDR. Here’s how it works and what the research says about its effectiveness.
My Sister Jill disrupts ideas of colonial glory with a troubling depiction of family violence, PTSD, homophobia and the ruinous intergenerational impacts of patriarchal oppression on everyone.
You have probably heard of ‘fight or flight’ responses to distressing situations. You may also be familiar with the tendency to ‘freeze’. But there is another response a person can have: ‘fawn’.
Cognitive immobility, brought on by being separated from family, can lead to emotional exhaustion, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Psychological debriefing usually involves counsellors providing survivors with a single counselling session soon after an event. But ‘talking through’ trauma can over-consolidate painful memories.
The mental health of front-line officers has drawn considerable attention, yet research shows that justice professionals working with traumatic material can also suffer psychological distress.
Sedative-hypnotic drugs can distort a patient’s perception of reality. Some patients wake up from a procedure believing they have been sexually assaulted.
Loren Henderson, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Ruby Mendenhall, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Chronic stress from living with systemic racism and gun violence can lead to increased symptoms of PTSD and depression as well as elevated cortisol levels.
For the Yazidi communities in northern Iraq, there is a need to improve mental health. The sense of cultural identity has the potential to improve psychological well-being.
Receiving a cancer diagnosis and undergoing cancer treatment can be a traumatizing experience. Psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin and MDMA could help alleviate symptoms from cancer-related PTSD.
Be it violence, war or natural disasters, there is no shortage of trauma which to adapt. A psychologist takes us through our full arsenal of coping mechanisms.
Recovery efforts in regions hit by Cyclone Gabrielle need to ensure support and care is provided to pregnant mums to prevent life-long consequences for babies in-utero.
The war in Ukraine has traumatised many people, military and civilian. But the country’s health service was already ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues.
From July this year, some psychiatrists will be able to prescribe psychedelics to some patients. Responses from experts working in the field are mixed.