Supporting children in the classroom after a traumatic event

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Dutch Toolkit Child en Trauma

Teachers in primary schools feel rather uncertain about their role and skills when it comes to trauma and traumatic stress (see the Dutch news). They don’t get much training about child mental health in pre-teacher education, even though psychological well-being is a requirement for children’s learning. Now I do certainly not want to argue that teachers should learn to be therapists, but I think that they can play an important role in signaling chronic traumatic stress symptoms and referring children and parents to specialists.

To build teachers’ confidence, we made a Toolkit Child and Trauma. It consists of a website and a booklet about traumatic exposure, posttraumatic stress, classroom skills, specialized organizations, and self care. We made the toolkit in collaboration with teachers, in order to really tune in to their needs and interests. The main idea of the toolkit is that children are resilient: most of them will overcome difficulties with the support of their social environment.

The tips we elaborated on for assisting a child after a traumatic event: Continue reading →

“I don’t know” may mean many things

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What do you think a child means when he says “I don’t know”? Especially when you’re talking about a traumatic event, such as the sudden death of his father? During the expert forum on Children and trauma (June 9 in Utrecht), communication specialists Joyce Lamerichs and Marca Schasfoort  zoomed in on interactions between children and professionals talking about traumatic experiences. The main conclusion of their analysis: don’t think too quickly that a child doesn’t know or doesn’t want to answer. Children may have many reasons to say that they don’t know, and sometimes still come up with answers afterwards.

Conference snapshot: update on Japan

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Masaharu Maeda was one of the keynote speakers of the European Conference on Traumatic Stress. He is the president of the Japanese Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and, not surprisingly, heavily involved in helping survivors of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March. Maeda provided some firsthand information about inhabitants’ losses, their reactions to the disaster, and current problems in the shelters.

According to the latest figures, about 15.000 people died and 10.000 people are missing. Because of this large number of missing people and the long and difficult process of retrieving and identifying bodies, many people are still uncertain about the fate of their loved ones. Almost all of them will have died, but there is no confirmation of their death, which makes it difficult to start to mourn; it puts the process of grieving ‘on hold’. Continue reading →

Current projects on children’s trauma recovery

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Within Monash Injury Research Institute (MIRI, Australia) we conduct several research and dissemination projects focusing on children’s trauma recovery. Our purpose is to build knowledge about how we can support children after traumatic events and to translate this knowledge into practical tools. We collaborate intensively with emergency professionals, university departments (within and outside of Monash University), and community organizations for this purpose. Currently, our main project topics regard: Continue reading →

Inspiring Twitter stories

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Did you meet someone exceptional or learn something extraordinary through Twitter?

I’m giving a Twitter workshop for mental health researchers and clinicians next week (4 July 2012) and would like to share some inspirational Twitter stories with them. Please tell yours in the comments!

cheers, Eva