Main description:

Pregnancy is a crucial point of intersection between generations. During pregnancy, women with a childhood maltreatment history have a 12-fold increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although awareness of the need for trauma-informed care and trauma-specific interventions is increasing in the fields of addiction and mental health treatment, there are no front-line programmes for the childbearing year that address maltreatment-related PTSD. The authors address these intergenerational cycles of childhood maltreatment and psychiatric vulnerability; they provide a resource to facilitate incorporating trauma-informed care and trauma-specific interventions into maternity services; and they signal the opportunities for improving outcomes for childbearing women with a history of childhood maltreatment.This volume provides an overview of information that child welfare and perinatal professionals can use in their work to move towards providing trauma informed care and developing trauma-specific interventions to improve intergenerational outcomes.

Contents:

The Contributors. Glossary of Abbreviations. 1: Why trauma informed care in the perinatal period? (Seng); 2: What is trauma informed care and why is it important? (Cuthbert and Seng); 3: What theories explain intergenerational patterns? (Seng and Taylor); 4: How does focusing on post-traumatic stress disorder shift perinatal mental health paradigms? (Sperlich); 5: How does traumatic stress affect pregnancy and birth? (Seng); 6: The postnatal period - opportunities for creating change (Rowe, Seng, Acton and Fisher); 7: What does trauma informed perinatal care look like? (Sperlich and Seng); 8: Where are we on the journey towards trauma-specific interventions and treatments for the perinatal period? (Cuthbert); 9: What are the next steps for trauma informed care in education and research? (Choi and Taylor). References. Index.