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Implicit Communication : The Body's Role In Clinical Work With Trauma Survivors, Julia A. Jakubowski

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This exploratory-descriptive study examined therapists' use of their physiological responses in work with trauma survivors. Broadly, the study sought to understand how a therapist's physiological responses play a role in how they construct meaning about a client. The study sample consisted of eight Relationally oriented therapists who worked with trauma survivors. Data were collected through hour-long, semi-structured interviews with each participant at a single point in time, utilizing the Physiological Response to Trauma Questionnaire. Findings revealed that participants used their physiological countertransference to inform clinical functions, specifically: ability to attune, choice of interventions, assessment, and ability to maintain boundaries and …

'Means Of Survival' As Moderator Of The Relationship Between Cumulative Torture Experiences And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Refugees, Lydia Odenat

Counseling and Psychological Services Dissertations

Refugee torture survivors often present with a myriad of psychological challenges, such as posttraumatic stress and depression, stemming from their exposure to torture and other pre- and post-settlement experiences (Gong-Guy and colleagues, 1991). The present study examined the moderating effect of four coping processes (i.e., family support, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and will to survive) on the relationship between cumulative torture and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among a sample of 204 (N=204) adult refugee torture survivors. Subjects completed a demographic questionnaire, the Torture Severity Scale (TSS; Kira, Lewandowski, Templin, Ramaswamy, Ozkan, Hammad, & Mohanesh, 2006), the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale …

Talking Through The Body : A Comparative Study Of Cognitive-Behavioral And Attachment Based Treatments For Childhood Trauma, Eric A. Eichler

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

Childhood abuse and neglect have been shown to have a devastating impact on an individual's social, emotional, and physical development. This study was undertaken in order to determine the best treatment approach for survivors of childhood trauma. The author investigated the impact of traumatic stress on the brain, and reviewed the psychoanalytic, child development, and neurobiological literature on the importance of the attachment relationship for healthy development. Various perspectives on the diagnosis of childhood trauma were explored, including models that centralize childhood trauma as the cause of much of the spectrum of mental illness we see today. The author researched …

Homelessness As Trauma : A Theoretical Analysis Exploring Treatment Of Symptoms Of Grief And Loss In Single African-American Homeless Women, Jesse J. Dice

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

The purpose of this theoretical study was to explore and describe the trauma that single homeless African-American women are at risk for before and during homelessness. Grief and loss theory and attachment theory were used to bring attention to the need of addressing traumas during homelessness. Literature was reviewed relating to exploring the areas of cross-sectional identities of race, gender and socioeconomic status within this population, historical contexts of homelessness in the U.S., and homelessness as trauma, to analyze the language used to describe the barriers in receiving treatment as a single homeless African-American woman. Through exploring these topics and …

Are We Reaching The Body? : A Study Of Social Workers' Attitudes On The Mind-Body Connection In Trauma Treatment, Samuel R. Douglas

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

A national sample of 39 social workers currently treating traumatized clients in therapy in the United States responded to an anonymous, online survey designed to gauge their attitudes toward the role of the mind-body connection in trauma treatment and recovery. The study sought to ascertain whether the most recent research in the neurobiology of trauma, and the resulting developments in the theory of trauma treatment, had significantly influenced the approach taken by social workers in clinical settings. The findings suggest that social workers have largely embraced the idea of a mind-body connection in trauma, and are inclined—in theory, if less …

Social Work As A Healing Vocation : The Exploration Of Clinicians' Trauma Histories And Implications For Practice, Mira L. Elwell

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This qualitative exploratory study examines the experiences of social workers who believe they came to the vocation in some part due to a personal history with trauma. Thirteen licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs) with histories of trauma were interviewed about their clinical practice focusing on career choice, countertransference, and disclosure. Clinicians discussed how personal experiences with trauma influenced and impacted their decisions to enter social work as a profession. Clinicians also discussed working with clients who were survivors of trauma, decisions surrounding self-disclosure, and the impact and importance of therapy and supervision of one's own. Study results indicated that positive …

Multicultural Personality, Hardiness, Morale, Distress And Cultural Stress In U.S. Service Members, Catherine Joan Herrera

Doctoral Dissertations

Modern military missions place numerous demands on service members, pushing them to negotiate technical, tactical, personal as well as cultural challenges. Although research in other fields has explored the issue of intercultural stress and resilience, to the author’s knowledge, none of these efforts have empirically examined these concepts in U.S. military samples, despite the frequent expatriation associated with a military career. The purpose of this study was to explore how factors of multicultural personality (Cultural Empathy, Open-Mindedness, Social Initiative, Emotional Stability, and Flexibility) as measured by the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, relate to hardiness, morale, cultural stress as well as PTSD …

Csa Survivors: What Heals And What Hurts In A Couple Relationship, Laura S. Smedley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a significant trauma that affects a person's self-concept and the ability to form healthy intimate relationships later in adulthood. Approximately 20% of adults who experience childhood sexual abuse go on to evidence serious psychopathology in adulthood (Harway & Faulk, 2005). Besides individual disturbances, CSA survivors struggle with many relational difficulties. These difficulties are usually most pronounced among their intimate partners (Reid, et al., 1995). According to attachment theory, attachment injuries are best healed in the context of a healthy, intimate relationship (Kochka & Carolan, 2002) (MacIntosh & Johnson, 2008). Conversely, the couple relationship may be …

Hemorrhage Detection And Analysis In Traumatic Pelvic Injuries, Pavani Davuluri

Theses and Dissertations

Traumatic pelvic injuries associated with high-energy pelvic fractures are life-threatening injuries. Extensive bleeding is relatively common with pelvic fractures. However, bleeding is especially prevalent with high-energy fractures. Hemorrhage remains the major cause of death that occur within the first 24 hours after a traumatic pelvic injury. Emergent-life saving treatment is required for high-energy pelvic fractures associated with hemorrhage. A thorough understanding of potential sources of bleeding within a short period is essential for diagnosis and treatment planning. Computed Tomography (CT) images have been widely in use in identifying the potential sources of bleeding. A pelvic CT scan contains a large …

Relational Viewing: Affect, Trauma And The Viewer In Contemporary Autobiographical Art, Matthew Ryan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the communicative relationship between contemporary autobiographical art and the viewer. By analyzing the work of six artists, Richard Billingham, Jaret Belliveau, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lisa Steele and Bas Jan Ader, I maintain that lived experience and personal history condition the way viewers respond to autobiographical art. I turn to literary theory as a critical methodology to argue that autobiographical art operates as a catalyst for identification, memory and self-discovery. I use affect and trauma theory to demonstrate how artwork produces meaning and discourse through the viewer’s feelings, emotions and bodily sensations. Consequently, I survey the importance …

The Severity Of Stages Estimation During Hemorrhage Using Error Correcting Output Codes Method, Yurong Luo

Theses and Dissertations

As a beneficial component with critical impact, computer-aided decision making systems have infiltrated many fields, such as economics, medicine, architecture and agriculture. The latent capabilities for facilitating human work propel high-speed development of such systems. Effective decisions provided by such systems greatly reduce the expense of labor, energy, budget, etc. The computer-aided decision making system for traumatic injuries is one type of such systems that supplies suggestive opinions when dealing with the injuries resulted from accidents, battle, or illness. The functions may involve judging the type of illness, allocating the wounded according to battle injuries, deciding the severity of symptoms …

Group Treatment For Adult Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse: The Relationship Between Social Bonds And Symptom Severity, Robin E. Lange

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the session-to-session change in symptom severity and social bonding ability in the participants of groups for survivors of sexual trauma. The concept of social bonding ability was addressed by examining the participants’ beliefs about the availability of social support, their beliefs about themselves, and their beliefs about their relationships with their group leaders. Group leader ratings of the level of process focus of their group were also measured. Twenty women between the ages of 19 and 55 receiving group treatment at three community agencies in Colorado were included in the study. Groups included in the study were …

The Relationships Among Self-Regulation, Executive Functioning, Coping Resources, And Symptomatology Following A Traumatic Event, Rebecca A.C. Blood

Counseling and Psychological Services Dissertations

Traumatic events have the capability to alter people’s psychological, biological, and social functioning to a significant degree (van der Kolk & McFarlane, 1996). As a result, there has been a growing need to develop increasingly more sophisticated models to understand the complexities of people’s responses to trauma (Luxenberg & Levin, 2004). Undergraduate students (N = 391) completed surveys designed to measure past trauma, trauma-related symptoms, self-regulation, executive functioning, and coping abilities. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, a modified version of the Early Trauma Inventory Self-Report – Short Form (ETISR-SF; Bremner, Vermetten, & Masure, 2000), the Trauma Symptom Inventory – Alternate …

What Psychotherapists Have To Teach Us About Childhood Developmental Trauma: The Roles Of Attachment Orientation And Coping Strategy, Rebecca Klott

Dissertations

Psychotherapists have been found to have higher rates of childhood developmental trauma when compared to non-clinicians, yet they do not report more distress. The current study added to the literature regarding the experiences of psychotherapists and explored a theoretical model integrating attachment and coping as mediators for the relationship between childhood developmental trauma and psychological distress among psychotherapists.

A total of 130 masters' level psychologists participated in this study. These participants were asked to complete the following measures: The Child Abuse and Trauma Scale (Sanders& Becker-Lausen, 1995), the Ways of Coping-Revised (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985; Folkman, Lazarus, Denkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & …

The Trauma Of Chattel Slavery: A Womanist Perspective Women On Georgia In Early American Times, Dionne Blasingame

English Theses

This thesis explores the psycho-socio-cultural dynamics that surrounded black womanhood in antebellumGeorgia. The goal is twofold: first, to examine how slave narratives, testimonies, and interviews depicted the plight of enslaved black women through a womanist lens and second, to discover what political and socio-cultural constructions enabled the severe slave institution that was endemic toGeorgia. Womanist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and trauma theory are addressed in this study to focus on antebellum or pre-Civil WarGeorgia.

Resilience, Insight, And Causation As Moderators Of The Relationships Between Trauma, Perceived Stress, Distress, Depression, Salivary Cortisol, And Dhea Through A Writing Intervention In A Diverse Sample Of Hiv-Positive Individuals, Courtney Biondi Kelsch

Open Access Theses

Background: Adverse psychological factors such as depression and stressful life events have been found to accelerate HIV disease progression, while positive factors such as optimism and spirituality have been found to slow progression to AIDS. The potentially protective role of the positive psychological factor resilience in HIV/AIDS has not been studied extensively. The relationship of resilience to depression, trauma, stress, and stress-related biological markers in HIV remains to be elucidated. In addition, written emotional expression interventions have shown promise in positively influencing HIV disease course, although the mechanisms require further study. Purpose: The aims of this study were to explore …

The Relationships Among Childhood Sexual Abuse, Self-Objectification, And Sexual Risk Behaviors In Undergraduate Women, Laurel B. Watson

Counseling and Psychological Services Dissertations

On a routine and daily basis, women are exposed to sexually objectifying experiences, which result in a number of harmful psychosocial outcomes (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Five-hundred and forty-sex women attending a large, Southeastern university participated in this study that investigated a conceptual model of how childhood sexual abuse (CSA) contributes to sexual risk behaviors (SRBs) via self-objectification (S0). In order to assess the causal relationships among variables, measured variable path analyses were conducted in order to test two theoretical models. The following instruments were used in this investigation: the Sexual Abuse Subscale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (a measure …

Predator's Tongue, Tara Mae Mulroy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Predator’s Tongue, a collection of poetry centering on the theme of predators and prey, explores the effects of trauma and violence—physical, psychic, sexual, emotional, and mental— through free verse narratives. The sharpness in the writing forces the reader to see the fluidity of these predator/prey relationships—wounded people wound people. The section breaks of this work serve to highlight growth and development: from “animal,” giving in to base impulses and horror, to “child,” beginning to learn, respond, and adapt, and to “woman,” learning how to be an adult in adult relationships.

Efficacy Of Self-Care And Traditional Mental Health Counseling In Treating Vicarious Traumatization Among Counselors Of Hurricane Katrina Survivors, Mary Alice Many

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The population consisted of 9,000 Gulf Coast Licensed Professional Counselors. Surveys were returned by 609 participants. In the researcher-developed demographic survey, 586 individuals responded to the questions regarding age, gender, ethnicity, and years of counseling experience; 585 individuals responded to questions about exposure to prior trauma, and personal Katrina-related losses; 578 individuals responded to the question about the percentage of their work week that was spent counseling victims, and 579 individuals responded to questions regarding the type of mental health care strategy they participated in. There were 439 usable surveys for the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) (Weathers, Litz, Huska, & …

“All This Was My Life”: Constructing Textual Self-Identity In Diaries, Christie M. Jeansonne

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The ordering and control of experience through fictive selves, constructed in consideration of an audience of the self and others, is part of the diary’s identity-building and meaning-making function. This thesis analyzes the process by which the diaries of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Janet Schaw construct multiple textual identities and conceptualize their public and private selves. The projection of these multiple selves in the diary text serve to justify the private individual experience as extraordinary and worth telling, as well as to connect with a public community experience, relating the self to a greater socio-cultural context.

Speaking Voices In Postcolonial Indian Novels From Orientalism To Outsourcing, Barbara J. Gardner

English Dissertations

In Orientalism, Edward Said identified how the Westerner “spoke for” and represented the silent Orient. Today with the burgeoning call-center business with India, it seems that the West now wants the Orient to speak for it. But is the voice that Western business requires in India a truly Indian voice? Or is it a manipulation which is a new form of the silencing of the Indian voice? This dissertation identifies how several Postcolonial Indian writers challenge the silence of Orientalism and the power issues of the West through various “speaking voices” of narratives representative of Indian life. Using Julie Kristeva’s …

Evocation Of Memory And Place, Colleen Pendry

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

My work investigates the inseparability of memory and emotion. Guided by what remain of my mother’s tattered memoirs, I have investigated a place from her past that suggests an intense search which filters through her writings and in tandem with my own visual remembrance. Through the manipulation of materials, technique and space, my work reveals a simple yet complex connectedness to memory and place.

Brains, Beads And Boulders: Trauma-Informed Sensory Interventions For Adolescents, Gini Christine Trotter

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

For beginning counselors there was minimal training in academic programs to address client experiences with trauma and the value of sensory interventions in treatment. The purpose of this literature review and compilation of adventure-based and creative arts interventions was to provide an understanding of trauma for adolescents from a neurobiological perspective, to provide assessment tools, a selection of sensory-based interventions for use within counseling sessions, and resources relevant to the beginning counselor. Steele and Kuban (2011) describe the experience of trauma as feeling completely unsafe and powerless. Interventions, then, should focus on repairing a sense of safety and power. To …

Buffalo, New York’S Citizen Soldiers: Personal Histories Of Combat, Trauma, And Returning Home After The Second World War, Drew H. Lewandowski

History Theses

Buffalo, New York’s Citizen Soldiers: Personal Histories of Combat, Trauma, and Returning Home after the Second World War

This thesis focuses on interviews from nine World War Two veterans who are from Buffalo, New York and the immediate surrounding areas. Included are three infantry men from the European theatre, including one paratrooper. Three who served in the Pacific theatre, including one medical officer, a medic, and one man served in the occupation of Japan. The remaining three served in the Air Corps in Europe, one pilot, one bombardier, and one fighter pilot.

Through extensive interviews, both written and filmed, this …

A Multimodal Approach For The Assessment Of Alexithymia: An Evaluation Of Physiological, Behavioral, And Self-Reported Reactivity To A Traumatic Event-Relevant Video, Sarah Jo Bujarski

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Evidence suggests alexithymia is often relatively elevated among people suffering from posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Despite a growing body of research supporting this relation between alexithymia and PTSS, it is unclear whether alexithymia is a unique predictor of emotional reactivity relative to posttraumatic stress symptoms. Furthermore, existing literature is largely limited to retrospective, self-reported symptoms. Therefore, the current study employed a multimodal assessment strategy for measuring emotional reactivity in the context of posttraumatic stress. More specifically, self-report, behavioral, and physiological measures were used to measure emotional responding to a traumatic event-related stimulus among motor vehicle accident victims. It was hypothesized …

Perception Of Communication Training Need Among Pediatric Trauma Team Members, Monica M. Mercado

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The purpose of this study is to use the APRC (Assessment of Pediatric Resuscitation Communication) as a guide to determine if trauma nurses and surgeons believe communication training is necessary. Many trauma team members have not received team communication effectiveness training in pediatric trauma settings. As a result, miscommunication between team members leads to medical errors during pediatric trauma activations. Thus, it is important to discover whether or not trauma team members believe communication training will help trauma teams improve the overall effectiveness of pediatric trauma activations. The present study provides a descriptive analysis that illustrates nurses’ and trauma surgeons’ …

Look Inside Firefighter Families: A Qualitative Study, Catherine Phillips Carrico

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Decision-Making Following Sexual Assault: Reporting Decisions And Exposure To The Criminal Justice System, Ryan Michael Walsh

Dissertations

Violent crimes represent significant costs to society and survivors; costs which include mental health conditions which may emerge afterward. Victims of sexual assault are at particularly heightened risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Breslau, Davis, Andreski, & Peterson, 1991). Although Crime Victims’ Compensation (CVC) is available to assist with healthcare costs for some individuals who report the event to police (NACVCB, 2009), many crimes are not reported. Theories of crime-reporting behavior suggest that victims decide whether to report crimes to police through the use of a “cost-benefit analysis” (Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 1988, p. 25). Little research, however, has been …

Trauma And Identity: Action As A Response To State Violence In Colombia, Alison J. Paul

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict has produced a myriad of types of violence as well as individual and social trauma. In the early 2000s, the proliferation of extrajudicial killings of non-combatant citizens by the Colombian armed forces left behind thousands of families to deal with the aftermath of their loss of a loved at the hands of the state. This phenomological research specifically looks in depth at the narratives of seven Colombian victims of state crimes that have been transformed through their experience of political violence and the actions they have taken in response to state crimes. Both individual and collective …

The Poetics Of A Dominican Holocaust And The Aesthetics Of Witnessing, Andrew Mark Merrill

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Julia Alvarez's best-known works, García Girls and In the Time of the Butterflies, to explore the intertextuality within Dominican-American fiction through the vocabulary and methodology of trauma studies and witnessing. Alvarez's work indicates that traditional academic discourse about witnessing often translates trauma survivors into tourists by legally dispossessing them from the witnesses they could provide as they seek to assign blame and pass judgment on the source of their traumatic experience. This process of exclusion threatens to hinder the ability of Dominican-Americans to work through their shared, traumatic experience with the Trujillo regime. Furthermore, this study …