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362 REVERSIBLE DISORDERS OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENTNemeroff et al., 2006). The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies’clinical practice guidelines (Foa et al., 2000) and other outcome studies (as reviewedin Keane, 1995; Marks et al., 1998) suggest that exposure-based therapies(such as PE) have the most efficacy for PTSD, but cognitive therapy (Resicket al., 2002) and interpersonal psychotherapy (Bleiberg & Markowitz, 2005) havealso been shown to be effective for this disorder. As discussed earlier, exposure isa salient ingredient in therapy for PTSD and other anxiety disorders because itfacilitates new associations and learning, and the extinction of the learned fear.Davis and colleagues have elucidated a gluatamergic/GABAergic underpinningfor the extinction of fear conditioning (Davis & Myers, 2002), and further researchwill determine whether exposure-based therapies impact these and other neurotransmittersystems in a meaningful way.Maladaptive thoughts (e.g., the world is unsafe, the traumatized individualis incompetent/at fault) are associated with the development and maintenanceof mood and anxiety disorders, including PTSD (Foa & Jaycox, 1999).Nonexposure-based cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) generally address themaladaptive thought patterns that maintain psychopathological symptoms indepression and anxiety. CBT attempts to facilitate the participant’s understandingof the connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and the environment.Within this framework, CBT also strives to teach the participant toregulate emotions effectively, to extinguish fearful responses brought about bytraumatic memories, and to cope adaptively and actively with life’s challenges.Clearly, in order to benefit from any kind of cognitive therapy, the patient musthave the neurocognitive ability and developed prefrontal cortex to comprehendthe treatment. Adolescents with this capacity can participate in and benefit fromCBT, which has been demonstrated to be more effective than wait-list or attentioncontrol in adolescents with anxiety disorders (reviewed by James et al.,2005).In addition, psychotherapeutic interventions focused on affective regulation,such as meditation, EMDR (McNally, 1999; Shapiro, 1995) and dialectical behaviortherapy (Linehan, 1993), and approaches focused on optimism/positivepsychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) are also promising in their abilityto promote psychological resilience in the aftermath of trauma. Research iscurrently underway to better understand the potential adjuvant effects of psychotherapieson the neurobiological underpinning and psychological manifestationsof mental illnesses like PTSD and depression (Yehuda, 2002). Further,as the field advances its understanding of the psychological elements of stressrelatedpsychopathology, clinicians can develop better tools for the assessment,diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD and other trauma-related illnesses.Progress in understanding the neurobiology of resilience and vulnerability tostress-related illnesses, and the dynamic interactions between biological sub-