ABSTRACT
Childhood trauma, including abuse and neglect, is probably the single most important public health challenge in the USA, a challenge that has the potential to be largely resolved by appropriate prevention and intervention. Inquiry into developmental milestones and family medical history is routine in medical and psychiatric examinations. Research has shown that traumatic childhood experiences not only are extremely common, but also have a profound impact on many different areas of functioning. The traumatic stress field has adopted the term “complex trauma” to describe the experience of multiple, chronic, and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature and early-life onset. When trauma occurs in the presence of a supportive, if helpless, care-giver, the child’s response is likely to mimic that of the parent–the more disorganized the parent, the more disorganized the child. After a child is traumatized multiple times, the imprint of the trauma becomes lodged in many aspects of his or her makeup.
