12th - 13th April, 2012
Kings College, London
Featured Workshop
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New Advances in Treating Child and Adolescent Trauma Written by Richard Meiser-Stedman |
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| Dr Patrick Smith has been at the forefront of research and practice in the area of child PTSD for 20 years. Dr Smith started his work with children and families caught up in the Bosnian war. As well as studying the impact on children and their parents of being caught up in this conflict, together with colleagues from the Children and War Foundation he developed an innovative group CBT-based intervention for reducing the symptoms of PTSD. This programme has since been implemented with thousands of children and young people exposed to disasters around the world, and has gathered impressive empirical support as a cost-effective treatment. Dr Smith went on to conduct the first clinical trial to look at individual cognitive therapy as a treatment for PTSD following single event traumas; this trial yielded spectacular results, and demonstrated conclusively that children are capable of engaging with sophisticated CBT techniques only previously used with adults. The treatment manual from this trial was published in 2009 ("PTSD: Cognitive therapy with children and young people"). Dr Smith has supervised several studies of youth attending Emergency Departments following trauma, which has contributed hugely to our understanding of the cognitive and psychosocial mechanisms involved in the onset and maintenance of PTSD in preschoolers, primary school-aged children and teenagers. As well as PTSD, he conducts research into computerised CBT for youth with depression. He is currently a co-investigator on clinical trials in young people - an early intervention trial for 8-17 year olds, and the first European study of treatment for pre-school children with PTSD. |