Question

Identify a case conceptualization based on cognitive behavioral therapy for a child who suffers with ptsd after witnessing a parent be murdered

Answer 1

Traumatic Event- A 10-year-old boy, single child, heard some strange voices in the kitchen in his house. He went to the kitchen to check out the things, he saw his father beating his mother with a frying pan on her head. She was screaming. The boy ran from the house and returned after 20 minutes.

He saw a police car and a crowd outside his home. His mother died due to injury on her head and she died shortly in the emergency room from subdural hematoma. Relatives thought of sending the child miles away to stay at a relative's place. After that, his father was diagnosed with major depressive disorder due to guilt over some transgressions from earlier years.
After that, the boy was diagnosed with PTSD.

Thus, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is a model that is used for children who were traumatically bereaved by various causes.

Children are assisted gradually to master the frightening issues of death by including discussion of death aspects and manner of death in each session, but these things are done very slowly. Gradual exposure can be incorporated throughout the therapy.
Trauma specific interventions can also be used to develop the narrative of a parent's death and maladaptive cognitions related to death. Cognitive coping skills may help the children by making them understand the connections between various thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. The boy will be helped to replace the thoughts with more helpful thoughts.

Grief focused interventions may also help the child by adopting a more adaptive grieving process. Interventions may involve addressing unresolved feelings towards the deceased person and help the child to remember positive memories. It may also include learning about death and grief process.