Trauma and disaster as life disrupters: A model of computer-assisted psychotherapy applied to adolescent victims of the Chernobyl disaster.

This article reports on a computer-based, psychologist-assisted technology for addressing posttraumatic responses in Chernobyl-disaster-affected children. Mental health professionals who worked with this population reveal substantially distorted thoughts and feelings about the children's past, present, and future more than others of their age. Chernobyl-affected and evacuated children are aware that they can never return to their homes, illnesses may befall them in childhood, their parents may die sooner than normal, and that their environment is poisoned. The LifeLine psychotherapeutic software program (available from A. Kronik), which is based on the goal-and-causal theory of psychological time is described and suggestions are given for further school-based intervention and prevention services. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)