Children and Adolescents in Trauma presents a variety of creative approaches to working with young people in residential children's homes, secure or psychiatric units, and special schools.The contributors describe a wide range of approaches, including art therapy and literature, and how creative methods are applied in cases of abuse, trauma, violence, self-harm and identity development. They discuss the impact of abuse and mistreatment upon the mental health of 'looked after' children, drawing links between psychoanalytic theory and practice and the study of literature and the arts.This indispensable book provides useful insights and a fresh perspective for anyone working with traumatised children and adolescents, including social workers, psychotherapists, arts therapists, psychiatrists, counsellors, psychologists and students in these fields.
Foreword, Peter Wilson, former Director of YoungMinds. Introduction, Kedar Nath Dwivedi, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Northampton Child and Family Consultation Service. Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent and Chris Nicholson, Therapeutic Services Manager, Donyland Lodge.; 1. Those Dear Little Monsters, Chris Nicholson.; 2. Welcome the Coming and Speed the Going: The Nature of Hospitality, Paul Caviston, Psychiatrist.; 3. From Reaction to Reflection, Terry Bruce, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist.; 4. A Room with a View: Finding a Way to Revisit Childhood Experience Through Art Therapy, Joanne Nicholson, Art Psychotherapist, St. Helena Hospice.; 5. No More Ghosts: Visions, Graves and Nightmares in Traumatic Memory, Chris Nicholson.; 6. Melting Muddy Mixtures: An Exploration of the Art Therapy; Process with an Adolescent Boy in a Therapeutic Community, Jacqueline Marshal-Tierney, Art Psychotherapist.; 7. The 'Rights' of Passage: Initiation Rites and Self-Harm, Chris Nicholson.; 8. Creating the Self: The Symbolic Meaning of Self-Harm, Chris Nicholson.; 9. 'Real isn't how you are made, it is a thing which happens to you'. Early Trauma: An Impingement on the Child's View of Reality, Long-term Prognosis and Therapeutic Intervention, Christine Bradley, Child Psychotherapist.; 10. A Ring A Ring of Razors: Art Therapy with Self-Harming Adolescents, Jane Saotome, Art Therapist.; 11. Living with Vampires, Jane Saotome.; 12. The Neurological Basis of Trauma, Diane Cook, Clinical Manager, Newbridge House.; 13. The Therapeutic Use of Story, Kedar Nath Dwivedi. References. Index.
This book offers us the language that we need in order to make the links between the causes of difficult behaviours and the creative remedies that art therapists are able to offer. The passages that offer current thought on trauma and its after-effects are helpful to me in my daily work as I attempt to convey a message to my colleagues about the behaviour of my clientele, the members of our school community who are having the greatest difficulty in integrating their difficult histories... All of us who are in contact with children and teens who have had such life-altering experiences need this background in order to formulate healing responses instead of inadvertently continuing to create additional rifts between the individual and their world.
