The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Part Three, The Minds of Children, focuses primarily on trauma effects and dynamics among adolescents. The book discusses these along with tangentially related neurological areas in order to give readers a practical understanding of the biological impact that trauma has over the lifespan and in specific circumstances. The second part, This Is Your Brain On Trauma, looks at the specific brain regions associated with trauma.

Part One, The Rediscovery of Trauma, covers the aforementioned historical progression of trauma treatment examining how new research in neuroscience is again revolutionizing the clinical approach to this dimension of therapy. The structure of the book is broken down into five parts, each covering a different important dimension of trauma necessary to grasp for a more effective understanding of it.

It is because of this that the book is highly recommended for those professionals who commonly encounter patients with varying degrees of trauma in their practice.īeginning with insight the author’s own initiation into trauma treatment in his clinical practice, The Body Keeps The Score starts by framing for us how the dialogue about PTSD has changed over the years. It also brings specific emphasis to the ways the body changes in reaction to early and prolonged traumatic experiences coming from a neuroscience perspective. The methods draw from a wide array of past and contemporary clinical work, and can be thought of as a look into the most current approaches to and ideas regarding trauma work. More severe cases are shown here to exemplify that the included methods have wide-reaching clinical efficacy. The cases covered throughout the book illustrate severe forms of trauma however, the forms of treatment are not exclusive to that population. Although there is a definite slant toward a non-pharmacological approach to psychotherapy, the psychiatric background of the author informs his discussion frequently. The book approaches the topic with an emphasis on detailed therapy outcome data, firsthand clinical examples, new and compelling neuroscientific findings, and a framework that looks at the long clinical and theoretical history of trauma treatment. Bessel van der Kolk, and psychotherapist Benjamin Fry, learn how traumatic stress, especially from childhood, can impact our brain, body, behaviour, relationships and mental health, long after the traumatic stress is over.Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma takes a detailed, well-researched, and multidisciplinary approach to discussing trauma and how it can be treated clinically. In this fascinating conversation for MindHealth360 and How To Academy, between one of the world’s pre-eminent trauma experts, psychiatrist Dr.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk