Understanding Trauma

What is post-traumatic stress disorder? What does it feel like? And how can it be overcome?

Trauma is a term that many of us find alienating and clinical. But in fact trauma is something most people encounter at some point in life, and post-traumatic stress - far from being a mental disorder - is a normal reaction to abnormal events: even breaking a bone or witnessing a car crash.

Drawing on 20 years of research and clinical practice, Roger Baker explains the many symptoms of post-traumatic stress and lays out a self help programme - emotional processing therapy - which can defuse the distressing memories of trauma and reduce the occurrence of flashbacks, nightmares and tensions.

Dr Baker also advises strategies to prevent post-traumatic stress in the first place.

Full of real-life case studies, this is essential reading for trauma sufferers, their family and friends, and specialists alike.

DR ROGER BAKER is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Dorset Healthcare Mental Health Trust, Coordinator of a Research Unit at Poole Hospital specialising in mind-body research, and visiting Professor at Bournemouth University. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Understanding Panic Attacks and Overcoming Fear (Lion).