Description
Book SynopsisTrauma and disaster throw lives into chaos and fill people with the fear of loss, injury, and death. Although most individuals experience only transitory posttraumatic symptoms, others experience the effects of the disaster long after the traumatic event when new experiences remind them of the past.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Acute and Long-Term Responses to Trauma and Disaster provides clinicians, researchers, and policy makers with an examination of current advances in research and treatment by recognized experts at the cutting edge of innovation. This timely book incorporates DSM-IV criteria and the new diagnostic category acute stress disorder, which emphasizes the breadth of posttraumatic stress symptoms and disorders and the importance of distinguishing between acute and long-term responses to traumatic events. Individual chapters go beyond PTSD to examine other posttraumatic disorders and responses, the mechanisms of transmission of posttraumatic stress, and its effects on behavior and health in natural and societal disasters and traumas, including war. This volume pays particular attention to the array of psychiatric responses to trauma, including PTSD and the unfolding of illness and recovery over time. Posttraumatic responses are considered across individual, group, family, and community perspectives and from the vantage point of developmental systems from childhood to older adult life.
Trade ReviewFullerton and Ursano's book is meant to be short, accessible, innovative, and comprehensive. . . . The book's style is very accessible, most chapters compile a lot of data in the form of comprehensive tables and extensive reference to the literature. . . .the book offers both a readable text and a resource, to be re-opened many times after its initial reading in quest of a specific reference or an ordinate summary of the literature. The detailed index (again, larger than in most edited books) facilitates the latter use of this very elegant volume.
* Israel Journal of Psychiatry *
Perhaps the most notable feature is the smooth and unfettered writing style of Fullerton and Ursano, who have clearly collaborated before and have found a unified voice. Both editors are renowned experts in the field of trauma and have written hundreds of publications on the effects of war, trauma, and disaster. A fine scholarly work, highly recommended for undergraduates through professionals.
* Choice *
Table of Contents Introduction. The other side of chaos: understanding the patterns of posttraumatic responses. Acute Responses to Trauma and Disaster. Multiple stressors following a disaster and dissociative symptoms. Exposure to traumatic death in disaster and war. Posttraumatic responses in spouse/significant others of disaster workers. Comorbidity of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. War-related psychopathology in Kuwait: an assessment of war-related mental health problems. Children of the storm: a study of school children and Hurricane Andrew. Long-Term Responses to Trauma and Disaster. Persistence of PTSD in former prisoners of war. Comorbidity of substance abuse and PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder and the risk of traumatic deaths among Vietnam veterans. Combat exposure and PTSD among homeless veterans of three wars. Acute to chronic: etiology and pathophysiology of PTSD—a biopsychological approach. Neurobiological alterations in PTSD: a review of the clinical literature. Conclusions. Trauma, time, and recovery. Index.
