47 pages • 1 hour read
Bessel van der KolkThe Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Epilogue
Epilogue Summary: “Choices to Be Made”
Van der Kolk summarizes the text, noting that trauma therapy is still an active field. He finds himself “close to despair” (350) since even with advances in neuroscience, in some ways, trauma therapy seems to be regressing. Reiterating his assessment of modern psychiatry, van der Kolk adds, “Many psychiatrists today work in assembly-line offices where they see patients they hardly know for fifteen minutes and then dole out pills to relieve pain, anxiety, or depression” (351).
For van der Kolk, trauma, especially in children, is a serious epidemic that is running unchecked. He spells out how the current system fails traumatized youth and lists ways it could be improved, particularly through specific programs that the National Child Traumatic Stress Network has implemented around the country in an attempt to combat the problem. He ends with a plea for his audience to take action now, before the problems of traumatized youth become too much for society to handle.
Epilogue Analysis
All of van der Kolk’s primary themes come together in the epilogue, as he essentially begs for change in the way traumatized youth are treated. With so many children at risk because of unstable or violent homes, and so few resources available to help them, van der Kolk argues that if society does not do something soon, whole generations of children will be traumatized and never recover. If those who run the political, medical, and education systems do not take action to provide better support to traumatized children, these children will carry their trauma with them permanently. Their suffering could potentially create a lasting burden on society as they are prescribed medications that do not address their underlying issues, straining taxpayer resources through recurring hospitalizations, rehabilitation, addiction treatment, and incarceration. Van der Kolk asserts that if given the proper treatment, traumatized people can become active, productive members of society; they need not fall through the cracks just because their brains have been altered.
