Toward a developing science and practice of childhood traumatic stress: Concluding comments

This book, although divided into separate parts on risk factors, resilience and clinical interventions, is based on an integral view of the field, that is the idea that prevention and treatment for traumatized children are part of a conceptual continuum. Clinicians have focused too long on risk factors, pathology, and deficits rather than resilience, resources and potentialities, and prevention specialists often fall into that same trap. It is our contention that a major shift has occurred since the mid-1990s in both prevention programs and clinical work. In this book, a diverse international group of clinicians and researchers make a strong case for a systematic focus in the traumatic stress field on understanding and utilizing resilience to meet the needs of traumatized children and families.