Posttraumatic Child Therapy (P-TCT)

Abstract

This article discusses the adverse health effects of political terror and community violence on the minds and bodies of children, posttraumatic symptoms and responses to violence, a prescribed assessment process, and a model of intervention called “posttraumatic child therapy” (P-TCT). Posttraumatic assessment of children victimized by political or community violence is seen here as a critical dimension of clinical treatment—P-TCT. Discussed as a system of care and therapy, moreover, P-TCT incorporates cognitive, behavioral, and psychodynamic procedures into its methods. Thus the proposed treatment approach here includes what the author calls behavioral traumatic stress management; techniques to alter the child's cognitive theories of self, trauma, and world; and the careful timing of the use of transference work to help repair the rupture in the fabric of the child's attachment capabilities.