Psychosocial Interventions for Child Traumatic Stress

This chapter reviews the array of psychosocial interventions available for the treatment of child traumatic stress and the specific qualities of these interventions for addressing the needs of traumatized children and their families. The literature supporting the efficacy or effectiveness of these interventions is reviewed in detail. Unlike other reviews of the literature on this topic—which largely focus on highlighting the interventions with the highest level of empirical evidence from clinical trials—this chapter emphasizes the information that clinicians and their agencies will need in selecting interventions for traumatized children and families and the available evidence supporting such interventions. Accordingly, this chapter also highlights the gaps in empirical knowledge that will be necessary to address in order to ensure that interventions can be effective, take root, and achieve acceptable scale in the settings where traumatized children typically receive care.