Your Client has psychological difficulties following a traumatic incident – what can ASSIST offer?
Traumatic occurrences take many forms, but frequently involve transportation or workplace incidents. Where these have impacted an individual’s psychological wellbeing a personal injury claim is often the result. Expert reports are then generated and specialist therapy is frequently recommended to help an individual recover from and move on following the trauma they have suffered.
ASSIST Trauma Care is a specialist Third Sector Organisation working with individuals and families affected by psychological trauma. Therapeutic models used in the treatment of single incident trauma are Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and EMDR, the two models recommended by the NICE Guidelines for PTSD 2005.
ASSIST therapists have been trained to use such evidence-based models to help sufferers rebuild their lives and move on following a traumatic experience that has impacted on their lives. Treatment duration is normally 8-12 weeks, unless there has been a bereavement involved in the trauma, in which case the course of treatment is likely to be longer.
It is recommended that treatment is not started until 4-6 weeks after an incident, to allow for natural recovery processes. Treatment is still likely to be successful even if there has been a much longer gap since the incident.
Where the trauma is complex or has been longer term, other re-scripting and reprocessing techniques are added to these core therapeutic models. ASSIST therapists fully recognise that there are likely to be complex sequelae from long-term trauma, for example personality disorder or dissociative disorder, and are trained to work with these conditions. Work with complex trauma is long-term rather than time limited.
