PSYC 4560 - Trauma Across the Lifespan

(3) Credit Hours
Prerequisite: PSYC 1102; PSYC 2000 or PSYC 2010; PSYC 2400; PSYC 2500 ; PSYC 3020; PSYC 3030
This course delineates a theoretical and practical integration of eco-developmental approaches to psychological trauma. The consequences of early traumatic experience will be mapped in the context of psychosocial developmental processes, including attachment, social interaction, emotional expression and cognitive construction of worldview. The impact of repeated trauma in the lives of children and adolescents will be explored in the context of developmental transformations and in relationship to psychopathology, gender and bio-physiology. The course will emphasize the nature of childhood trauma and the developmental consequences in later childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The concepts of risk, psychopathology and resilience will be examined in the context of traumatic exposure and the transformation of developmental processes and alternate developmental pathways. Examples of childhood victimization and trauma will include child maltreatment, family violence, illness, loss and war. Although the primary focus of the course is on individual developmental consequences of trauma, socially and culturally related trauma will be discussed in the context of the eco-developmental framework. Applications of trauma research and theory from a multidisciplinary perspective will be considered as they relate to parenting roles and larger cultural contexts. Intervention and advocacy as well as the institutional and community responses to traumatized children and families will be addressed.