Adversity, Trauma Symptoms and the Effectiveness of an Australian Individualised Developmental Trauma Intervention Program

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a therapeutic intervention program Take Two; designed to address developmental trauma experienced by Child Protection clients in Victoria, Australia. Replicating a 2010 evaluation study of the program, we utilised a Time 1-Time 2 design to identify the impact of tailored Take Two treatments informed by the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics' (NMT™). Change in the overall sample was measured by the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC; ages 8-16 years) and Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC; ages 3-12 years). In addition, a sub-cohort of children with severe adverse infant experiences was identified using a developmental history of adversity tool; Part A of the Neurosequential Network's Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT™) Metric. Treatment effects were also evaluated to determine the extent to which this potentially more vulnerable subgroup was improving. Significant improvement was found in the TSCC cohort (8-16 years) with effect sizes ranging from small to medium (<i>d</i> = 0.23-0.54) on TSCC sub-scales. The largest effects were found on Anxiety (0.54), which moved from sub-clinical to non-clinical. The TSCYC cohort (3-12 years) showed significant symptom reduction on all trauma scales with medium sized effects (<i>d</i> = 0.44-0.53), and the largest effect on Posttraumatic Stress-Total (0.53). In the sub-cohort experiencing moderate-to-severe adversity in infancy, effect sizes were small to medium (<i>d</i> = 0.15-0.59). Take Two interventions were associated with significantly reduced trauma symptoms even when children's adverse experiences in infancy were moderate to severe, highlighting the benefits of NMT™ guided systemic and individually tailored therapeutic interventions.