Psychotherapeutic strategies for healing trauma.

Purpose: The Adaptive Information Processing Model (AIP), originally developed by Shapiro (2001), provides a model for understanding how trauma affects the brain and how healing occurs.

Conclusions: The effects of trauma are thought to be much broader than the diagnosis of PTSD and overlap with many other diagnostic categories. Recent physiological research supports the complexity of neurobiological responses to childhood stress and trauma.

Practice Implications: The Treatment Hierarchy, AIP model, and evidence-based treatment framework presented here provide the context and a compass for holistic PMH-APRN practice for working with traumatized patients.