Telehealth Delivery of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Telehealth offers an innovative way to address significant gaps in access to care and is being used to deliver a variety of treatments for children and adolescents, including treatment for posttraumatic stress. Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT; Cohen et al., 2017) is an evidence-based, manualized treatment protocol designed to treat posttraumatic stress and co-occurring symptoms such as depression and anxiety in trauma-exposed children and youth ages 3–18 and their supportive and non-offending caregivers. TF-CBT is one of the most well-researched and validated treatments for childhood traumatic stress and has been shown to be feasible and effective when delivered via telehealth. When delivering TF-CBT via telehealth, it is important to consider (1) an implementation model that incorporates an evidence-based treatment model along with engagement strategies, (2) telehealth best practices, and (3) ethical and legal issues. This chapter explores each of the aforementioned issues and demonstrates the use of telehealth delivery of TF-CBT via a detailed case example.