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System-Based Trauma Case Study

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When most of us stop and think about treatment of trauma survivors, the majority of us think on an individual bases. This is not necessarily wrong, but what about the families? What about the care-takers, parents, children, families, and spouses? Working with the families can be just as important as working with the trauma survivors. When the leave the therapeutic environment, where do they go? Most go home to their families. If the families are not included in treatment, even for psychoeducation, what is that doing at home? Are the families being affected, are they affecting the trauma survivors and in turn the trauma survivor affecting the families there in causing a domino effect? Creating a home environment where understanding what is going on, how everyone can and might be affected is important to treating trauma survivors so secondary trauma is not created. Using system-based approach can not only help the individual, but also the family. If the client starts to utilize system-based therapy, they will start to gain a more “wrap-around” approach to their treatment, rather than just individualized. When the …show more content…

This situation can bring together couples who are dealing with possible crisis situations, such as a partner being angry-hostile behavior, and work on identifying what is going on with both parties. System-based approach goes over how the trauma individual feels (angry, externalizing frustrations, hurt, rejected, paranoia) and how the partner feels (empathy, identification, trying to understand). There are times when couples feel they are going to say the wrong thing and trigger their spouse. This in turn causes the spouse to walk on egg shells. Recently there have been more studies to show that secondary PTSD has been received due to living with the spouse who has trauma as opposed to hearing about the traumatized

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