Review by booksbeforebs - The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

booksbeforebs 's review for:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

4.0

emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

“Trauma is now our most urgent public health issue, and we have the knowledge necessary to respond effectively. The choice is ours to act on what we know.”

‘The Body Keeps the Score’ is a thorough, accessible and relentlessly engaging account of Psychology’s understanding of trauma, from its origins to its neurophysiological effects to its outward presentations and ramifications to its potential treatments. Beneath it all is a call to action: We have the tools to treat this condition—and the myriad of conditions, daily sufferings and societal ills that stem from it—but we must choose to heed the research and take the appropriate action. This issue needs more attention and it needs the acceptance, funding and commitment that it deserves. If we take such action, the whole of society will benefit.

I found ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ to be an incredibly informative and enlightening read, and I thoroughly recommend it. However, the extensive inclusion of highly detailed and potentially triggering material perhaps makes it unsuitable for people who are themselves living with trauma. Furthermore, given that over ten years have now passed since this book was published, it is likely that much has changed in terms of current thinking and policies, and it would be useful to have a revised edition to reflect this.

I found that this book gave me a great deal of hope—trauma CAN be treated. However, this hope was replaced by a sense of frustration and helplessness when I tried to find the therapeutic interventions recommended, only to find access to them is extremely limited, especially outside of the United States, and that the treatment that is available is often priced in a way that is prohibitive. This frustration only compounds when you take into account the fact that those dealing with trauma are the least likely to have such means to fund treatment.

As the author asserts, trauma is perhaps the most urgent public health issue of our time—maybe even more so now than when the book was written. It is about time that it was acknowledged, and it is about time that we saw changes in policy and treatment options and availability in accordance with this.

Content Warnings