Coping strategies: a psychoeducational approach to post-traumatic symptomatology.

Survivors of extensive childhood abuse frequently present complicated clinical dilemmas in the inpatient setting; they experience complex post-traumatic and dissociative symptomatology, such as flashbacks and other reexperiencing phenomena, as well as intense affects and self-destructive impulses. Such patients seek recommendations of how to manage their post-traumatic symptomatology, as well as how to tolerate intense affects and maintain safety. The nursing staff at McLean Hospital's Dissociative Disorders Program have developed a psychoeducational approach that patients have found useful. Coping strategies, which the patients learn to formulate, help clients stall impulsivity and dissociative episodes through the use of healthy diversions, grounding techniques, and support networks.