Talk:Neurological theories of recovered memory

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"Trauma" in context

"Trauma" is a very general term, and the usage here needs to do one of two things:

1. Narrow the definition to specific forms of psychological events, which are certainly things presented in therapy. "It is important to separate the role of the mental health professional as therapist from the role as an expert witness in court." [1]
2. General physical and psychological trauma from accidents, combat, etc. I'm active, for example, in the Trauma and Critical Care [2] online forum.

Without touching the issues of ritual abuse, there is obviously a huge knowledge base dealing with the second sort of trauma. The military has an immense interest in combat-related stress. Physical trauma medicine is multidisciplinary, and a survivor of multisystem trauma from an automobile accident is apt to get psychological evaluation, and treatment if necessary. While the methods are controversial — Critical Incident Stress Debriefing is now deprecated — emergency response workers also are monitored for psychological trauma.

So, given the amount of data on trauma of the second sort, which is noncontroversial, why are the examples predominantly related to child abuse? The second sentence of the first paragraph introduces the first case" "People sometimes report recovering long-forgotten memories of, for example, childhood sexual abuse." There is one mention of "Vietnam combat veterans with PTSD, and in patients with PTSD related to early childhood sexual and physical abuse. ", but all of the other trauma examples appear to be child and sex oriented. There are explicit mentions of child neurology but much more vague references to all populations.

This emphasis makes me about the article being a way to introduce content about patterns of child abuse, rather than seriously addressing the broader subject. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)