ABSTRACT
People have always tried to prepare for bad times. As a very small child during World War II, I remember being carried on a stretcher by my mother and the women in my little village in southern Sweden, pretending to be wounded, as a training exercise in case that war should enter our peaceful country. Later on, especially in the last decade, several big disasters opened our eyes to how innocent citizens, war victims, people exposed to bank robberies, fire victims and others suffer from shock and stress disorders and need treatment of some kind. Methods for treating these victims have developed into programmes for traumatic stress management.
