This book is a much-needed update that offers an in-depth and comprehensive exploration of the variety of relevant issues concerning clients’ traumatic, crisis-related, and disaster events that commonly are encountered by professional counselors and other mental health professionals. The textbook is framed, theoretically, within a systemic paradigm, including important recent physiological and neurobiological understandings of the impact of trauma on individuals. The book is organized into six sections. Section I offers a foundation for understanding the various trauma-associated issues. In fact, it tries, with a great deal of intentionality, in the first three chapters, to construct a trauma scaffold of foundational knowledge, upon which students can build increasingly more complex conceptualizations of more nuanced clinical issues associated with trauma. Section II explicates relevant constructs, such as loss and grief; these constructs continue to build upon and expand the trauma scaffolding of the first section. It also offers information about the traumatic events that may be experienced by specific age groups, people who are vulnerable, and other particular populations. Section III begins with his explication of the moral psychology of evil. Section IV presents a broader systemic context for understanding the effects of trauma on groups of people. Section V analyzes assessment methods and interventions associated with psychological trauma. It identifies and discusses the larger scope of integrative approaches to trauma, crisis, and disaster intervention, thus emphasizing the importance of more systemic models. Section VI begins by presenting ethical perspectives on trauma work. It explicates vicarious traumatization, highlighting the need for counselor selfawareness. It also focuses on the importance of mindfulness-based self-care for counselors, encouraging clinicians to be healing counselors rather than wounded healers.
