The Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS) program is a school-based, group and individual intervention. It is designed to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and behavioral problems, and to improve functioning, grades and attendance, peer and parent support, and coping skills. CBITS has been used with students from 5th grade through 12th grade who have witnessed or experienced traumatic life events such as community and school violence, accidents and injuries, physical abuse and domestic violence, and natural and human-made disasters. CBITS uses cognitive-behavioral techniques (e.g., psychoeducation, relaxation, social problem solving, cognitive restructuring, and exposure).
Category Archives: Adolescents (13-17)
Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS)
The UCSF HEARTS project is a comprehensive, multilevel school-based prevention and intervention program for children who have experienced trauma. The goal of UCSF HEARTS is to create school environments that are more trauma-sensitive and supportive of the needs of traumatized children. A main objective of this project is to work collaboratively with a School District to promote school success by decreasing trauma-related difficulties and increasing healthy functioning in students within the school district who have experienced complex trauma. Trauma-sensitive school environments will likely benefit not only traumatized children, but also those who are affected by these children, including child peers and school personnel. Founders of UCSF HEARTS: Joyce Dorado, Ph.D. Project Director, Assistant Clinical Professor, UCSF-SFUSD HEARTS, and Lynn Dolce, MFT, and Miriam Martinez, PhD.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an empirically supported treatment designed to help people manage overwhelming feelings and self-defeating behaviors. These feelings and behaviors may create major challenges in life (such as angry outbursts, violence, depression, immobility and avoidance by suicide attempts, substance abuse, and eating disorders). DBT encompasses core modules of mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills training. The emphasis is on building and enhancing skills to regulate emotions, deal with the distressing situations, and improve relationships. DBT was invented by Dr. Marsha Linehan, a psychologist, who used her own insights from living successfully with Borderline Personality Disorder to develop this novel therapy. In its standard form, there are four components of DBT: skills training group, individual treatment, DBT phone coaching, and consultation team.
Trauma Center-Justice Resource Institute
DBT Fact Sheet – NAMI
Trauma Systems Therapy (TST)
TST is a comprehensive, phase-based treatment program for children and adolescents who have experienced traumatic events and/or who live in environments with ongoing traumatic stress. TST is designed to address the complicated needs of a trauma system, which is defined as the combination of a traumatized child/adolescent who, when exposed to trauma reminders, has difficulty regulating his/her emotions and behavior and his/her caregiver/system of care who is not able to adequately protect the youth or help him/her to manage this dysregulation. The most common setting in which TST is implemented is for youth in child welfare who can be in birth homes, foster care, residential treatment centers, community-based prevention programs, and programs for unaccompanied refugee minors. There is an emphasis on involvement of the caregiver as being essential to success. TST was developed by Dr. Saxe and Dr. Heidi Ellis at Boston University School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Boston. The materials are available in Spanish and Korean.
Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
TF-CBT is a psychosocial treatment model designed to treat post traumatic stress and related emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents ages 3 to 18 years. Initially developed to address problems associated with childhood sexual abuse, TF-CBT has been modified and tested with children who have experienced a wide array of traumas, including domestic violence, traumatic loss, war, commercial sexual exploitation, and the often multiple and complex traumas experienced by children who are placed in foster care. TF-CBT is appropriate for use with children exposed to trauma whose parents or caregivers did not participate in the abuse.
12-16 weeks, conjoint child and parent psychotherapy approach for children and adolescents who are experiencing significant emotional and behavioral difficulties related to traumatic life events.
Trauma and Grief Component Therapy (TGCT)
Ages 10–18; impacted by community violence, traumatic bereavement, natural and human-made disasters, war/ethnic cleansing, domestic violence, witnessing interpersonal violence, medical trauma, serious accidents, physical assaults, gang violence, and terrorist events; designed to identify/effectively treat youth who are moderately to severely distressed.
Muslim, Croatian, and Serbian youths, multi-racial, multi-ethnic middle and high school students exposed to community violence and school shootings.
http://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/assets/pdfs/tcgt_a_general.pdf
Trauma Affect Regulation Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET)
TARGET is a trauma-focused psychotherapy for the concurrent treatment of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUDs). The program, which has been used with adolescents and adults, is designed to serve individuals suffering from PTSD and SUDs. The goal of treatment is to help patients suffering from PTSD and SUDs to regulate intense emotions and solve social problems while simultaneously maintaining sobriety.
Youth and adults with past or recent incidents of trauma.
Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents- Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS)
SPARCS is a group intervention that was specifically designed to address the needs of chronically traumatized adolescents who may still be living with ongoing stress and may be experiencing problems in several areas of functioning. These areas include difficulties with affect regulation and impulsivity, self-perception, relationships, somatization, dissociation, numbing and avoidance, and struggles with their own purpose and meaning in life as well as worldviews that make it difficult for them to see a future for themselves. Overall goals of the program are to help teens cope more effectively in the moment, enhance self-efficacy, connect with others and establish supportive relationships, cultivate awareness, and create meaning.
Teens aged 12-19 yrs. old, various ethnicities, urban/suburban/rural settings, consistent participation in 16 1-hr sessions.
Strengthening Multi-Ethnic Families and Communities
Strengthening Multi-Ethnic Families and Communities Program is a unique integration of various prevention/intervention strategies geared toward reducing violence against self, the family, and the community. The program targets ethnic and culturally diverse parents, of children aged 3-18 years, who are interested in raising children with a commitment to leading a violence-free, healthy lifestyle.
Ethnically and culturally diverse parents of kids aged 3-18 years old, parents available to meet the extreme time commitment needed to complete program.
Seeking Safety
The Seeking Safety model, developed by Lisa M Najavits, Ph.D., at Harvard Medical/McLean Hospital, is a manualized, 25-topic, flexible integrated treatment that offers coping skills to help clients attain greater safety in their lives. It is present focused and designed to be inspiring and hopeful. Originally designed to address PTSD and substance abuse, it since has been implemented with diverse traumatized clients who may not necessarily meet criteria for these disorders. Used widely with adults, it has been implemented with adolescents (both boys and girls), and a published randomized controlled trial is available on adolescent girls.
Dual diagnosis of substance abuse and trauma/ PTSD, group and individual, male and female, outpatient and inpatient residential.