Shari B. Kaplan, LCSWIntegrative Mental Health

When Trauma and Neurodevelopment Look Similar

30 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief presentation, clinical social worker Shari B. Kaplan describes how she noticed that patients with trauma exhibited patterns similar to children with neurodevelopmental challenges such as autism. She consulted leading experts Bessel van der Kolk and Stephen Porges, who encouraged a formal study that subsequently demonstrated neurobiological overlap between trauma and autism. This insight prompted Kaplan to create an integrated treatment framework that accounts for individual learning styles, developmental trajectories, and mental health, leading to measurable healing in her patients.

Chapters

I started realizing that my patients who had trauma were very similar to the children in New York that I worked with who had neurodevelopmental challenges. So I spoke to Bessel van der Kolk and Stephen Porges about it because I was working with both of them on different cases. And they said, "That's really interesting. We should do a study on it." So they did. And so now the world knows that trauma and autism are neurobiologically similar. But it also helped me develop the frameworks for treating patients and realizing that people's learning styles and the way they develop is very significantly a part of their behavior and their mental health. And so I started treating all of it together for my patients and my patients were healing.