What help is ASSIST able to offer your patients?
ASSIST Trauma Care is a specialist Third Sector Organisation working with individuals and families affected by psychological trauma. A traumatic occurrence can take many forms – an attack, a transport incident, a fire, a bomb, war, a tsunami. What all these and many other traumatic incidents have in common is the enormous impact they have on the life of an individual or group of individuals and the overwhelming emotion generated.
ASSIST therapists have been trained to use evidence-based models to help sufferers rebuild their lives and move on following a traumatic experience that has impacted on their lives.
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. 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.
Where the trauma is complex or has been longer term other re-scripting and reprocessing techniques are added to these basic 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.