Friday, February 14, 2025

Harbor Mental Health Spotlight

A significant number of children are exposed to traumatic life events. A traumatic event threatens injury, death, or physical safety of self or others and causes the child to feel extremely threatened, terrorized, or helpless.  Such events include abuse, domestic violence, car accidents, community and school violence, natural disasters, chronic illness or medical conditions, acts of terrorism, war, suicide, and other traumatic losses. According to the 2008 Presidential Task Force on PTSD and Trauma in Children and Adolescents, more than two thirds of children report experiencing a traumatic event by age 16, while not every child exposed to these events will experience traumatic stress, those who do, develop behaviors and reactions that cause distress long after the event ends. Common reactions include depression, anxiety, intense fears, difficulties at school and in relationships, behavior changes, withdrawal, difficulty eating and sleeping, substance use, risk-taking behaviors or unhealthy sexual activity among older children.  Signs of traumatic stress differ by child and by age/development. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network identifies the following signs of traumatic stress in children:

Preschool Children:

-Feels helpless/uncertain
-Fear of being separated from parent/caregiver
-Cry/scream a lot
-Eat poorly & lose weight
-Return to bed wetting
-Return to baby talk
-Develop new fears
-Nightmares
-Recreate trauma through play
-Not developing toward next growth stage
-Changes in behavior
-Questions about death

Elementary Children:

-Becomes anxious/fearful
-Worry about their own or other’s safety
-Becomes clingy with
parent/teacher
-Feel guilt or shame
-Tell others about traumatic event again and again
-Have a hard time concentrating
-Experience numbness
-Have fears the event will happen again
-Difficulty sleeping
-Easily startled

Middle & High School Children:

-Feel depressed & alone
-Discuss traumatic events in detail
-Develop eating disorders & self-harming behaviors
-Start using/abusing alcohol or drugs
-Become sexually active
-Feel different from everyone else
-Take too many risks
-Have sleep disturbances
-Avoid places that remind them of the event
-Say they have no feeling about the event
-Show changes in behavior

Helping children recover from traumatic life events involves parent and child education and trauma-informed services.  Often parents are traumatized by their child’s experience or have their own trauma history that is activated by what their child has gone through. Sometimes parent reactions stifle the child’s ability to feel safe communicating about their experience. Helping the parent to understand how trauma affects their child can help them to make sense of their feelings, attitudes, and behaviors.  The better they understand their child’s reactions, the better prepared they will be to help them cope.

The National Institute of Trauma and Loss in Children’s web site identifies the following tips for parents to help them understand how to “be there” for children:

-Don’t underestimate the impact trauma can have on a child.

-Secondary wounding can occur when a child is told, “I don’t believe you,” or “It couldn’t have happened that way,” or “If only you hadn’t…”

-After experiencing trauma, a child’s primary need is safety and nurturance, even if it seems they are “pushing us away.”

-How a child perceives an event is often different than what we may expect.

-Children may temporarily regress after a trauma. They may start to wet the bed again, suck their thumb, or want to sleep with their parents.

-View children from a developmental (not chronological) perspective. They may be 6-years-old but may be responding as a 4-year-old.

SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence Based Programs identifies 15 different evidence based models under mental health treatment for trauma, specifically for ages 0-17.  Goals of trauma-informed interventions are to address issues of safety, enhance emotional regulation and anxiety management, improve the child-parent relationship, address and normalize trauma-related responses, address grief and loss, allow child to share their experience, facilitate adaptive coping, increase child’s sense of empowerment, and return the child to optimal functioning. When childhood trauma is not addressed, it can result in a prolonged sense of fear and helplessness that continues into adulthood.  Effective treatment can help to resolve these feelings and unbearable memories and allow healing to begin.

Julie Pratt, Clinical Director, Youth Day Treatment, Harbor

References

 Steele, W. & Raider, M.  Structured Sensory Intervention for Traumatized Children, Adolescents and Parents: Strategies to Alleviate Trauma (SITCAP).2009. Edwin Mellen Press: NY, NY.  American Psychological Association https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/children-trauma-update.aspx  Stress Network: Resources for Parents and Caregivers;  HYPERLINK "https://www.nctsn.org/resources/audiences/parents-caregivers"  https://www.nctsn.org/resources/audiences/parents-caregivers  National Institute of Trauma and Loss in Children (TLC): What Parents Need to Know About Childhood Trauma  Jean West, LCSW, CTC-S  https://tlcinstitute.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/what-parents-need-to-know-about-childhood-trauma/

SAMHSA  https://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov/

A significant number of children are exposed to traumatic life events. A traumatic event threatens injury, death, or physical safety of self or others and causes the child to feel extremely threatened, terrorized, or helpless.  Such events include abuse, domestic violence, car accidents, community and school violence, natural disasters, chronic illness or medical conditions, acts of terrorism, war, suicide, and other traumatic losses. According to the 2008 Presidential Task Force on PTSD and Trauma in Children and Adolescents, more than two thirds of children report experiencing a traumatic event by age 16, while not every child exposed to these events will experience traumatic stress, those who do, develop behaviors and reactions that cause distress long after the event ends. Common reactions include depression, anxiety, intense fears, difficulties at school and in relationships, behavior changes, withdrawal, difficulty eating and sleeping, substance use, risk-taking behaviors or unhealthy sexual activity among older children.  Signs of traumatic stress differ by child and by age/development. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network identifies the following signs of traumatic stress in children:

Preschool Children:

-Feels helpless/uncertain
-Fear of being separated from parent/caregiver
-Cry/scream a lot
-Eat poorly & lose weight
-Return to bed wetting
-Return to baby talk
-Develop new fears
-Nightmares
-Recreate trauma through play
-Not developing toward next growth stage
-Changes in behavior
-Questions about death

Elementary Children:

-Becomes anxious/fearful
-Worry about their own or other’s safety
-Becomes clingy with
parent/teacher
-Feel guilt or shame
-Tell others about traumatic event again and again
-Have a hard time concentrating
-Experience numbness
-Have fears the event will happen again
-Difficulty sleeping
-Easily startled

Middle & High School Children:

-Feel depressed & alone
-Discuss traumatic events in detail
-Develop eating disorders & self-harming behaviors
-Start using/abusing alcohol or drugs
-Become sexually active
-Feel different from everyone else
-Take too many risks
-Have sleep disturbances
-Avoid places that remind them of the event
-Say they have no feeling about the event
-Show changes in behavior

- Advertisement -

Helping children recover from traumatic life events involves parent and child education and trauma-informed services.  Often parents are traumatized by their child’s experience or have their own trauma history that is activated by what their child has gone through. Sometimes parent reactions stifle the child’s ability to feel safe communicating about their experience. Helping the parent to understand how trauma affects their child can help them to make sense of their feelings, attitudes, and behaviors.  The better they understand their child’s reactions, the better prepared they will be to help them cope.

The National Institute of Trauma and Loss in Children’s web site identifies the following tips for parents to help them understand how to “be there” for children:

-Don’t underestimate the impact trauma can have on a child.

-Secondary wounding can occur when a child is told, “I don’t believe you,” or “It couldn’t have happened that way,” or “If only you hadn’t…”

-After experiencing trauma, a child’s primary need is safety and nurturance, even if it seems they are “pushing us away.”

-How a child perceives an event is often different than what we may expect.

-Children may temporarily regress after a trauma. They may start to wet the bed again, suck their thumb, or want to sleep with their parents.

-View children from a developmental (not chronological) perspective. They may be 6-years-old but may be responding as a 4-year-old.

SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence Based Programs identifies 15 different evidence based models under mental health treatment for trauma, specifically for ages 0-17.  Goals of trauma-informed interventions are to address issues of safety, enhance emotional regulation and anxiety management, improve the child-parent relationship, address and normalize trauma-related responses, address grief and loss, allow child to share their experience, facilitate adaptive coping, increase child’s sense of empowerment, and return the child to optimal functioning. When childhood trauma is not addressed, it can result in a prolonged sense of fear and helplessness that continues into adulthood.  Effective treatment can help to resolve these feelings and unbearable memories and allow healing to begin.

Julie Pratt, Clinical Director, Youth Day Treatment, Harbor

References

 Steele, W. & Raider, M.  Structured Sensory Intervention for Traumatized Children, Adolescents and Parents: Strategies to Alleviate Trauma (SITCAP).2009. Edwin Mellen Press: NY, NY.  American Psychological Association https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/children-trauma-update.aspx  Stress Network: Resources for Parents and Caregivers;  HYPERLINK "https://www.nctsn.org/resources/audiences/parents-caregivers"  https://www.nctsn.org/resources/audiences/parents-caregivers  National Institute of Trauma and Loss in Children (TLC): What Parents Need to Know About Childhood Trauma  Jean West, LCSW, CTC-S  https://tlcinstitute.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/what-parents-need-to-know-about-childhood-trauma/

SAMHSA  https://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov/

Recent Articles