Disability Psychotherapy: An Innovative Approach to Trauma-informed Care

This book has been over twenty years in the making. It stems from an even longer history of experience with people who have disabilities and additional distress as a result of traumatic life experiences, and is an important contribution to our understanding of the world of disability and emotional deprivation. People with disabilities have suffered discrimination and neglect of their emotional needs, perhaps because the pain of difference cannot be tolerated, perhaps because of lack of will or lack of knowledge. Much has been written about cognitive development in those who are cognitively impaired. Much is written about attachment for people who don’t have disabilities. An attempt is made here to bring together what we know about early emotional development and the consequences of failure to provide an emotionally nurturing experience. This is then applied to people with disabilities. The evidence points to the possibility of effective interventions to correct the damage and this must be worthwhile. With the correct intervention, individuals can be saved from incarceration in secure units and have a much improved quality of life. This book helps to fill the knowledge gap and to encourage others to overcome their resistance to facing the pain. There are ways of working that help, and when appropriately targeted, make a huge difference to some very complex and distressed lives.