Recovering From The Trauma Of Your Car Accident

Trauma following automobile accidents can persist for weeks, months, or longer. Symptoms include nervousness, sleep disorders, loss of appetite, and sexual dysfunction. In Crash Course, Diane Poole Heller and Laurence Heller take readers through a series of case histories and exercises to explain and treat the health problems and trauma brought on by car accidents.

Road traffic injuries are a neglected global pandemic. Up to 50 million people a year worldwide are injured or disabled in car accidents. The deleterious impact on the global economy is immense. Thousands of those injured die of opiate overdoses, trying to deal with chronic pain. The post-accident life of a survivor is all too often devastated by spinal or severe orthopedic injuries, depression, anxiety, PTSD, sleep disturbances, mild episodic or chronic pain, and/or a traumatic brain injury that can cause personality changes, cognitive and memory impairments, and debilitating fatigue. A substantially reduced quality of life with career changes and setbacks, broken and overstressed relationships, and financial hardships that continue for many years, often ensue. First Responders, healthcare providers, the survivors’ community and to the largest degree, the survivors’ family, are forced to deal with the staggering impacts. Auto accidents can dramatically alter lives, forever. Where do survivors and their families go for help? How do survivors heal and get their lives back? Everyone is desperate for hope and evidence-based solutions to manage disabling conditions and ultimately reclaim their lives. Thisis the first book to offer comprehensive, evidence-based information to both the survivors and their caregivers on understanding, managing, and healing physical and emotional traumas sustained in auto accidents. Based on James Zender's more than fifteen years’ experience as a clinical psychologist specializing in auto-accident trauma care, Recovering From Your Car Accident leads survivors and their families through the extensive process of emotional and physical recovery. With empathy and compassion, Dr. Zender explains how to conquer the multitude of challenges that often result from auto accidents, including managing pain, depression, and anxiety, addressing concerns about the future and finances, personality changes, emotional and cognitive dysfunction, post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and strained personal relationships. Through stories recounted by Dr. Zender's patients, survivors will learn that they are not alone and that there is hope for a better tomorrow. Policymakers will gain insight into accident prevention and will be inspired to implement policy improvements to better meet the needs of the auto accident community. Helpful tips throughout this book and a resource section featuring the best online and community support options will aid survivors and their families with rehabilitation. Recovering from Your Car Accident willassist survivors with rebuilding their lives and discovering new ways to thrive.

Trauma following automobile accidents can persist for weeks, months, or longer. Symptoms include nervousness, sleep disorders, loss of appetite, and sexual dysfunction. In Crash Course, Diane Poole Heller and Laurence Heller take readers through a series of case histories and exercises to explain and treat the health problems and trauma brought on by car accidents.

The crisp, bright morning in December 1977 started out like any other for author Connie Bachman. The junior at Big Walnut High School was making the twelve-mile drive to school when her car spun out of control on black ice. As Bachman's car skidded across the centerline, it struck another car and killed its twenty-nine-year-old driver, Patricia Marie Sloan. In the moving memoir Sliding: A Journey through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder After a Fatal Car Crash, Bachman shares her twenty-five-year struggle with and recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder. In vivid and revealing detail, she describes the disorder's painful onset following the car accident, recounts the pervasive symptoms that controlled her life, and shares how she finally began her healing journey. Bachman offers an intimate look at the recognition and manifestation of PTSD as she discusses the following: What PTSD is and how to identifying your own trauma-related symptoms Understanding the grief, shame, and "survivor guilt" that many experience Finding caring professionals to guide and support your healing Realizing that your life is worth living to its fullest Sliding is a valuable PTSD resource for those who may be thinking, "That's my story, too," but have not yet found the strength to share it.

A resource that guides accident victims through the recovery maze.

It is estimated that over 3 million people per year are injured in motor vehicle accidents and up to 45% of people in a serious auto accident develop posttraumatic stress disorderl. Written by the creators of an empirically supported cognitive-behavioral therapy program developed at The Center for Stress and Anxiety Disorders in Albany, this therapist guide includes all the information and materials necessary to implement a successful program for treating accident-related PTSD. The therapeutic technique described in this book is research-based with a proven success rate. The renowned authors provide clinicians with step-by-step instructions for teaching their clients important skills that have been scientifically tested and shown to be effective in treating emotional trauma caused by involvement in a car accident. Designed to be used in conjunction with its corresponding workbook, this therapist guide outlines a treatment program that includes cognitive restructuring, relaxation techniques, and exposure exercises. User-friendly and comprehensive, Overcoming the Trauma of Your Motor Vehicle Accident, Therapist Guide is a resource that no clinician can do without.

Brain on Fire meets Carry On, Warrior in this inspirational memoir and “testament to the things that break us, heal us, and make us who we are” (Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author) that explores one woman’s journey from chronic pain and hopelessness to finding joy, redemption, and healing. At seventeen years old, Ruthie Lindsey is hit by an ambulance near her home in rural Louisiana. She’s given a five percent chance of survival and one percent chance of walking again. One month later after a spinal fusion surgery, Ruthie defies the odds, leaving the hospital on her own two feet. Just a few years later, newly married and living in Nashville, Ruthie begins to experience debilitating pain. Her case confounds doctors and after numerous rounds of testing, imaging, and treatment, they prescribe narcotic painkillers—lots of them. Ruthie has become bedridden, dependent on painkillers, and hopeless, when an X-ray reveals that the wire used to fuse her spine is piercing her brain stem. Without another staggeringly expensive experimental surgery, she could well become paralyzed, but in many ways, she already is. Ruthie goes into the hospital in chronic pain, dependent on prescription painkillers, and leaves the same way. She can still walk but has no idea where she’s going. As her life unravels, Ruthie returns home to Louisiana and sets out on a journey to learn joy again. She trades fentanyl for sunsets and morphine for wildflowers, weaning herself off of the drugs and beginning the process of healing—of coming home to her body. Raw and redemptive, There I Am is not just about the magic of optimism, but the work of it. Ruthie’s extraordinary memoir “like going on a walk with a best friend and listening to a life-changing speech at the same time: it’s equal parts familiar and profound, warm and insightful, comforting and challenging, relatable and unlike anything you’ve read before” (Mari Andrew, New York Times bestselling author).

Unhealed trauma is one of the primary reasons why some people do not easily heal from the consequences of accidents or sudden shocks. This foundational teaching has been instrumental in bringing permanent healing to people all over the world.