Dealing with the Effects of Trauma is SAMHSA's self-help guide for coping with trauma. The step-by-step manual begins with suggestions for making small changes—keeping a journal, developing an everyday routine, working out—to improve mood and functioning. Next comes the "healing journey," a list of goals for long-term growth and recuperation. The guide contains helpful resources and tips for finding service providers close to home.

Kim Kubal created Strength to Heal, a Web site based on her four-part book for trauma, abuse, addiction, and PTSD survivors. The site has information for clinicians and caregivers that explores patient–provider relationships, spirituality, and sensorimotor psychotherapy. Each healing tool is a resource Kim has used to facilitate her recovery from severe trauma and co-occurring disorders.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are ten categories of abuse, neglect, or loss certain kids have been subjected to before their 18th birthday. The ACE Response site integrates research on prevention and intervention with proven treatment strategies to promote best practices for recovery. ACE's Restorative Integral Support is a roadmap for program, community, and workplace development that uses social networking to give consumers a real voice and connection to helpful resources.

Trauma and Justice: Treatment and Recovery Through the Delivery of Behavioral Health Services  

Examines the need to address trauma in the delivery of treatment and recovery services for people with substance abuse and mental disorders. Covers screening for trauma-related problems and suggests interventions and support services to ensure recovery.

HealthNewsDigest.com  June 8, 2011 

New research has shown that children’s risk for learning and behavior problems and obesity rises in correlation to their level of trauma exposure, says the psychiatrist at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital who oversaw the study. The findings could encourage physicians to consider diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder rather than attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which has similar symptoms to PTSD but very different treatment.
The study examined children living in a violent, low-income neighborhood and documented an unexpectedly strong link between abuse, trauma and neglect and the children’s mental and physical health: It reported, for instance, that children experiencing four types of trauma were 30 times more likely to have behavior and learning problems than those not exposed to trauma.
For more information, visit www.lpch.org. 

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Federal Report Women and Trauma

An interagency report on women and trauma was published in June 2011 by the Federal Partners Committee on Women and Trauma.  Trauma occurs when an external threat overwhelms a person’s coping resources.  Trauma can result from a wide variety of events, including experiencing or witnessing violent crime, accidents, abandonment, physical or sexual abuse or neglect, cultural dislocation, terrorism, wars, historical violence, institutional trauma, and natural disasters.  Unaddressed trauma experienced by women, including trauma caused by violence, affects all of us.  Advances in the science and practice of behavioral health have helped us to understand that trauma, including trauma caused by violence, have a huge impact on the health, the economy, and even the security of our Nation. 

The Federal Partners Committee on Women and Trauma is an outgrowth of the Federal Intergovernmental Partnership on Mental Health Transformation Working Group on Women and Trauma of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA).  Beginning in (year) six Federal agencies worked collaboratively for more than a year to highlight the scope of trauma in the lives of women and girls and to develop collective strategies for action.  This report results from the work of the SAMHSA Working Group and from a Roundtable held on April 29, 2010 with Federal, State, tribal, private and community stakeholders working with women and girls affected by trauma across multiple services sectors and settings. The focus of this report is on trauma associated with violence against women.  Violence against women occurs to women of all ages and in all settings, and it affects all of our social institutions. 

The report is a call to action, not a comprehensive review. The agencies involved represent only a subset of all agencies whose constituents may be affected by trauma, and many important related issues, such as HIV/AIDS, prevention, housing, and cultural issues, are only touched on in this document. However, the report takes an important first step by describing the level of violence against women and girls in our society and exploring its consequences.