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trauma management therapy

a treatment program intended to alleviate the anxiety and fear, manage the anger, and enhance the interpersonal functioning of combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is a sequential multicomponent approach that combines (a) education, in which the client is informed about the symptom chronicity, skill deficits, and extreme social maladjustment associated with PTSD; (b) exposure therapy, in which the client reexperiences—in imagination or through virtual reality—his or her specific traumatic event during individually administered weekly sessions; (c) programmed practice, in which the client performs exposure-related homework assigned by the therapist; and (d) socioemotional rehabilitation, in which the client participates in structured, group-administered social and emotional skills training sessions. [developed in 1996 by clinical psychologists B. Christopher Frueh (1963–  ), Samuel M. Turner (1944–2005), Deborah C. Beidel, and Robert F. Mirabella and health administrator and political scientist Walter J. Jones]

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Psychology term of the day

October 9th 2024

spectator effect

spectator effect

the effect on performance when a task is carried out in the presence of others. When an individual is confident of being able to perform the task (i.e., has high task confidence), spectators improve performance; when task confidence is low, they worsen it.