Creating a Curriculum on Childhood Traumatic Stress

Abstract

The relative absence of child psychiatrists among professionals actively involved in the field of child maltreatment and other forms of childhood traumatic stress is largely attributable to a historical lack of attention to this subject in standard child psychiatry residency training. This article describes a curriculum for a child and adolescent psychiatry residency that focuses on childhood traumatic stress and integrates this subject into all of the required clinical rotations and didactic courses. Ways in which existing training programs in child psychiatry and related fields can integrate this focus into standard curricula are discussed, and such programs are encouraged to pay greater attention to this topic in training new professionals to work with children and families.