In a project overseen by trauma therapists Abby Hershler and Lesley Hughes, biomedical communications alumna Patricia Nguyen (Class of 2018) and BMC associate professor Shelley Wall co-edited Looking at Trauma–A Toolkit for Clinicians.
Published this autumn by Penn State University Press, the workbook presents twelve psychoeducational models of trauma, which Nguyen (MScBMC 2018) translated into graphic medicine comics. The illustrations are accompanied by introductions that describe how these visual models might be used in therapy.
This sample of Patricia Nguyen's work shows how a single visual metaphor can be a powerful explanatory tool–in this case, explaining how a present-day trigger evokes a response fuelled by strong emotions from past trauma.
Hershler, Hughes, Nguyen and Wall designed Looking at Trauma to be an easy-to-use, accessible, and engaging resource for health-care professionals who provide psychoeducation to clients with histories of childhood trauma.
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Looking at Trauma–A Toolkit for Clinicians: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09207-2.html