David Rope’s Reviews > The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma > Status Update

Techniques used for treating PTSD

Detailed look at some of the physiological and psychological affects of developmental trauma. Describes how clinicians diagnose the symptoms but not the cause; leading to inadequate treatments. Particularly criticizes the DSM5 for using symptoms as a means of diagnosis instead of focusing on the causes. An argument can be made for inclusion of developmental trauma disorder to the DSM

Discussion of the primitive brain to the prefrontal cortex in response to traumatic stress

Van der Kolk discusses how MRI imaging highlights areas in the brain affected by trauma-sensory areas and fight or flight areas are activated, whereas speech and logic areas are not. For those who’ve experienced trauma certain sensory can trigger an event and the past becomes present.

In his book on trauma and PTSD, psychiatrist Van der Kolk announces these stunning facts: 1 in 5 Americans were molested as children, 1 in 3 couples engage in physical violence, a quarter grew up with alcohol parents. First chapter discusses the lives of military veterans, their war time experiences, and how the brain gets stuck causing symptoms of PTSD.