These findings indicate that older age, optimism, perception of family seeing the world as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful, stronger Arab ethnic identity, greater self-regulation and stronger coping skills promote adolescent adaptation and health. Salutogenesis frames information about how resilient youth living in high threat environments may respond to preventative community-based behavioral health interventions as well as treatment of depression, anxiety, and other psychological distress among adolescents living with ongoing violence. (PsycINFO Database Record

This study surveyed preschool children who accompanied their mothers to a battered women's shelter. Elevated rates of behavior problems and social competence difficulties were observed. White males appeared more impaired than any other gender/ethnic combination. In addition, a number of other risk factors for later educational and psychosocial difficulties were present. Survey results suggest that this is an underserved population that the field of early childhood special education should address.

Sleep has been implicated in learning processes that appear to underlie recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The importance of quality and timing of sleep following exposure-based therapies has been suggested. The present study evaluated relationships between sleep and adaptive emotional processing following written narrative exposure (WNE) to memories of traumatic events experienced by participants with clinically significant PTSD symptoms. Participants included 21 urban-residing nontreatment-seeking adults with full or subthreshold symptoms of PTSD who completed 4 sessions of 30-min WNE with the first session either in the evening or the morning. There was a significant reduction of PTSD symptom severity after WNE sessions (partial η = .65), but there was no interaction between group assignment based on the initial session's proximity to sleep and initial reduction of PTSD symptom severity (partial η = .01). Polysomnography following evening WNE revealed increased duration of total sleep and N2%, reduced N3%, and increased eye movement density during REM sleep compared with baseline recordings (dz = 0.65 to 1.15). Reduced N3% and increased REM density were associated with less improvement of PTSD symptoms (r = .58 & -.63). These findings suggest a relationship between preservation of diminished arousal during sleep and adaptive trauma memory processing.

After exposure to traumatic stress, women are at greater risk than men for developing symptoms of some psychiatric disorders, including insomnia and nightmares. Sleep disturbance is one of the most refractory symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Women were included in a few studies that examined efficacy of psychological or pharmacologic interventions for trauma-related sleep disturbances. Studies demonstrated preliminary evidence for efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, imagery rehearsal therapy, and combinations of these techniques in treating insomnia and nightmares in trauma-exposed women. Prazosin as an adjunct to ongoing treatment is a potentially efficacious strategy for treating trauma-related nightmares in women.

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