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Research suggests that many families facing homelessness — especially women and their children — have experienced traumatic events including physical, emotional and sexual abuse. In fact, many families who enter shelters have experienced multiple traumatic events. This guide provides a framework and an intervention model for shelter providers to use to meet the needs of this highly traumatized population.
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Heritability accounts for 30–40% of the variance contributing to risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and for other mood and anxiety disorders. It is also well known that childhood exposure to abuse and other early life adverse events increases risk for the later development of these disorders. Recent research from a number of areas suggests that childhood experiences in combination with genetic factors appear to contribute to alterations in biologically based stress response systems. Taken together, these data suggest that a greater understanding of risk, resiliency, and stress-related illness will rely on further progress in dissecting the interactions between genes and the environment during the developmental critical periods of neural circuits that underlie emotion.
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This edition of the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence (NCFV) E-bulletin focuses on children exposed to family violence. It provides information on the extent and impact of children’s exposure to family violence, and highlights Canadian research and resources addressing this issue.
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This paper helps mental health services to measure how well placed they are to support the people who use them. It sets out the three stages a service needs to reach on ten key challenges to become fully focused on recovery. It allows mental health services, their users and their commissioners to judge how well they are doing in meeting each of the ten challenges.
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The sad truth is that most U.S. schools don’t foster good mental health or strong connections with friends and nurturing adults. Data show that only 29 percent of sixth- through 12th-grade students report that their schools provide caring, encouraging environments. Another 30 percent of high school students say they engage in high-risk behaviors, such as substance use, sex, violence and even suicide attempts. For decades, a dedicated group of prevention experts — many of them psychologists — has been trying to improve those statistics through an approach called social and emotional learning, or SEL. They believe that if schools teach youngsters to work well with others, regulate their emotions and constructively solve problems, students will be better equipped to deal with life’s challenges, including academic ones.
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The objective of this study was to evaluate a resilience-enhancing program for youth (mean age = 13.32 years) from Beslan, North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation. The program, offered in the summer of 2006, combined recreation, sport, and psychosocial rehabilitation activities for 94 participants, 46 of who were taken hostage in the 2004 school tragedy and experienced those events first hand. The results indicate a significant intra-participant mean increase in resilience at both follow-up assessments, and greater self-reported improvements in resilience processes for participants who experienced more trauma events.
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Recent research has indicated concern for the degree of stress and emotional well-being among university staff. This study examined the effectiveness of yoga in enhancing emotional well-being and resilience to stress among university employees. Results show that even a short program of yoga is effective for enhancing emotional well-being and resilience to stress in the workplace. The authors suggest that employers should consider offering yoga classes to their employees.
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This research examined the psychometric properties of the Revised Ego Resiliency 89 Scale (ER89-R; Alessandri, Vecchio, Steca, Caprara, & Caprara, 2008), a brief self-report measure of ego resiliency. The scale has been used to assess the development of ego resiliency from late adolescence to emerging adulthood, focusing on different ways to define continuity and change. Findings suggest that the ER89-R scale represents a valid and reliable instrument that can be fruitfully suited for studying ego resiliency through various developmental stages.
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The aim of the present study was to assess and understand the long-term trajectory of psychological problems among young Middle Eastern refugees in Denmark. They were assessed first on arrival in Denmark in 1992–1993 and again 8–9 years later. The high prevalence of psychological problems at arrival was considerably reduced by the time of follow-up, but it was still somewhat higher than what has been found in most community studies using the same assessment tools. The study emphasizes the importance of environmental factors for healthy long-term adaptation after traumatic experiences related to war and other organized violence.
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Ethnic identity, achievement, and psychological adjustment were examined among 95 youth from immigrant Chinese families in Canada (mean age 12 years). Utilizing cross-sectional data, promotive effects of ethnic identity were observed; higher ethnic identity was associated with above average achievement and self-esteem and below average levels of depressive symptoms. Vulnerability effects of ethnic identity were fewer; lower ethnic identity was associated with above average depressive symptoms and, for males only, below average self-esteem.
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This study attempts to collate and classify the available research around a multi-level biopsychosocial model, theoretically and semiotically comparable to that used in describing the complex chain of events related to host resistance in infectious disease. Using this underlying construct the authors attempt to reorganize current knowledge around a unitary concept in order to clarify and indicate potential intervention points for increasing resilience and positive mental health.
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This manual guide groups leaders through a 24 session trauma recovery process for male survivors. In part I group members develop a shared emotional and relational vocabulary. Part 2 focuses more specifically on abuse and the connections between trauma and psychological symptoms, addictive behavior and relationship patterns. Part three focuses most directly on core recovery skills.
Related paper:
The Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model (TREM): Conceptual and Practical Issues in a Group Intervention for Women
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This study assessed the mediating role of trauma symptoms in the relation between child maltreatment and behavioral problems. It is based on the postulate that child maltreatment is a severe form of chronic relational trauma that has damaging consequences on the development of children’s behavioral regulation. Results were consistent with the literature on developmental trauma research and provide empirical support to the idea that trauma-related symptoms resulting from early maltreatment may constitute a mechanism in the development of psychosocial problems in preschoolers.