Psychologists Give Some Guidance To Adolescents

Psychologists Give Some Guidance To Adolescents.
Teen girls struggling with post-traumatic underscore disarrange stemming from sexual abuse do well when treated with a type of therapy that asks them to repetitively confront their traumatic memories, according to a small new study. The study's results suggest that "prolonged unveiling therapy," which is approved for adults, is more effective at helping adolescent girls overpower post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than traditional supportive counseling. "Prolonged exposure is a breed of cognitive behavior therapy in which patients are asked to recount aloud several times their traumatic experience, including details of what happened during the sophistication and what they thought and felt during the experience," said study framer Edna Foa, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

And "For example, a jail-bait that felt shame and guilt because she did not prevent her father from sexually abusing her comes to realize that she did not have the authority to prevent her father from abusing her, and it was her father's fault, not hers, that she was abused. During repeated recounting of the harmful events, the patient gets closure on those events and is able to put it aside as something beastly that happened to her in the past. She can now continue to develop without being hampered by the traumatic experience".

Foa and her colleagues reported their findings in the Dec 25, 2013 affair of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers focused on a organize of 61 girls, all between the ages of 13 and 18 and all suffering from PTSD interconnected to sexual abuse that had occurred at least three months before the study started. No boys were included in the research.

Roughly half of the girls were given defined supportive counseling in weekly sessions conducted over a 14-week period. During that time, counselors aimed to forward a trusting relation in which the teens were allowed to address their traumatic experience only if and when they felt ready to do so. The other dogged group was enlisted in a prolonged exposure therapy program in which patients were encouraged to revisit the beginning of their demons in a more direct manner, albeit in a controlled environment designed to be both contemplative and sensitive.

The result: After a one-year follow-up, investigators found the girls in the alternate group were more likely to overcome their PTSD and apprehend improvements in overall functioning than those receiving standard supportive counseling. What's more, the side found that prolonged exposure therapy was safe to use among younger patients, even when given by newly trained counselors who were occupied to providing standard supportive counseling. Keith Young, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral system at the Texas A and M Health Science Center College of Medicine, said the findings are in underscore with what he would expect.

And "We've been using prolonged exposure for long enough now in adults to understand that it is a very gain treatment option for PTSD and depression. I'm not surprised that it might work in this population. There has been involvement that young people won't have the coping skills needed to handle it, but I assume the benefits clearly outweigh the concerns at this point in time".

In an editorial that accompanied the study, Sean Perrin, of the unit of psychology at Lund University in Sweden, said prolonged exposure psychoanalysis has already been shown to be effective among both girls and boys as young as 3 when used as part of an overall treatment program for anxiety. "What is solitary about Foa's study is that the treatment does not include any other ingredients but prolonged exposure. When vulnerability is used with traumatized and anxious children it is often given alongside, or after, a lot of interventions aimed at structure confidence with confronting fears.

Foa's study shows that is not necessary with sexually abused teens. They pay-off confidence by confronting their fears in a slow, willful and deliberate way". Still such treatment needs to happen in a professional setting led by experienced therapists. "A loved one pushing and cajoling another kindred member to face their fears can actually be unhelpful quitting. "The bottom line is that if you or your neonate is suffering from anxiety or PTSD, a therapist gradually leading you through exposure, wherein you slowly and own confront your fears, can lead to dramatic improvements in functioning without the need for medication".