Healing War Trauma details a broad range of exciting approaches for healing from the trauma of war. The techniques described in each chapter are designed to complement and supplement cognitive-behavioral treatment protocols—and, ultimately, to help clinicians transcend the limits of those protocols. For those veterans who do not respond productively to—or who have simply little interest in—office-based, regimented, and symptom-focused treatments, the innovative approaches laid out in Healing War Trauma will inspire and inform both clinicians and veterans as they chart new paths to healing.

Decades after Charles Figley’s landmark Trauma and Its Wake was published, our understanding of trauma has grown and deepened, but we still face considerable challenges when treating trauma survivors. This is especially the case for professionals who work with veterans and active-duty military personnel. War Trauma and Its Wake, then, is a vital book. The editors—one a Vietnam veteran who wrote the overview chapter on treatment for Trauma and Its Wake, the other an Army Reserve psychologist with four deployments—have produced a book that addresses both the specific needs of particular warrior communities as well as wider issues such as battlemind, guilt, suicide, and much, much more. The editors’ and contributors’ deep understanding of the issues that warriors face makes War Trauma and Its Wake a crucial book for understanding the military experience, and the lessons contained in its pages are essential for anyone committed to healing war trauma.

For those veterans who do not respond productively to, or who have little interest in office-based, regimented, and symptom-focused treatments, the innovative approaches laid out in Healing War Trauma is the guidebook clinicians need to chart new paths to healing.

An increasing number of students and professionals are choosing to travel the globe to engage with the realities of trauma and human suffering through mental health aid. But in the field of global mental health, good intentions are not enough to ensure good training, development, and care. The risk of harm is real when outsiders deliver mental health aid in culturally inappropriate and otherwise na•ve ways. This book, based on the experiences of the co-editors and their colleagues at Burma Border Projects (BBP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the mental health and psychosocial well-being of the displaced people of Burma, sets out global mental health theory allied with local perspectives, experiences, real-life challenges, strengths, and best practices. Topics include assessment and intervention protocols, vulnerable groups and the special challenges they present, and supervision and evaluation programs. An introduction by the editors establishes the political and health contexts for the volume. Written in a style appropriate for academic audiences and lay readers, this book will serve as a fundamental text for clinicians, interns, volunteers, and researchers who work in regions of the world that have suffered the violence of war, forced displacement, human rights violations, poverty, and oppression.

War Trauma and Its Wake a vital book for anyone interested in understanding the military experience, and the lessons contained in its pages are crucial for any clinician committed to healing war trauma.

First published in 1989. This rich and exciting book draws together a wide range of theoretical conceptualizations, current research, and clinical understanding to provides up-to-date and comprehensive account yet available of traumatic stress and its consequences. John Wilson integrates complex theoretical frameworks from Freud to Seligman, Horowitz to Selye, to paint a powerful explanatory picture of the interaction between trauma, person, and post-trauma environment.