Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gregerson, Mary Banks (Jasnoski)
• Kaslow, Nadine J
• Carter, Jean A
• Roberts, Michael C

Titel

Creativity Enhances Practitioners' Resiliency and Effectiveness After a Hometown Disaster

Ist Teil von

• Professional psychology, research and practice, 2007-12, Vol.38 (6), p.596-602

Ort / Verlag

Washington: American Psychological Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Today trauma stabs at the heart of America, intruding into practitioners' sessions and their homes. In mass disasters, besides primary trauma symptoms of immediate victims, secondary symptoms reverberate into first responders, family and friends, clinicians providing longer term aftercare, surrounding communities, and those experiencing distal "trauma by television." A practitioner's hometown disaster echoes with dual risks: (a) primary victimization from living at the disaster epicenter and (b) secondary trauma through helping other victims. This dual shock for clinicians arrives at the moment when professional demands escalate. Any practitioner in a hometown disaster needs to balance community needs with personal needs for recovery, integration, and resiliency. As a remedy for either others' or a clinician's own trauma, creative treatment methods enhance standard cognitive behavioral treatments for trauma. The field of trauma psychology needs a creativity evidence base comparable with the strong evidence for cognitive behavioral approaches. My own story in the aftermath of a mass human-made disaster depicts a creativity-laced odyssey of transformation from primary and secondary trauma, through training-based experiences from cognitive behavioral and creative treatments, to serenity.