Source: Marx et al., 2024 [1]
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
In February 2024, the leading trauma research journal published a review article attempting to bring some clarity to the controversy about how a traumatic event ought to be defined.
 
Who Did This?
Brian P. Marx, Ph.D. is a psychologist who specializes in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). His work has focused on the assessment of and effective treatment for PTSD.
 
The Premise
When making the diagnosis of PTSD, the first gatekeeper criterion is whether an individual experienced a truly traumatic event or not. In the diagnostic criteria, the event is called Criterion A. If the definition of Criterion A is too narrow, individuals with PTSD won’t get the diagnosis. If the definition is too broad, individuals will be falsely diagnosed, potentially receive the wrong treatment, and contaminate the validity of research studies.

The controversy about how to define traumatic events is as old as PTSD itself, stemming to its birth in 1980. Marx argued that a new review was needed because of current events—race-related events and the COVID-19 pandemic presented new quandaries with energetic challengers.

Marx organized the evidence by noting that there are four sides in the debate:
(1) Keep criterion A the way it is, which is restricted to life-threatening events that are either directly experienced, witnessed happening to others, or learning about events secondhand that happened to loved ones.
(2) Broaden criterion A to include non-life-threatening events, such as divorce, expected death of a loved one, financial stress, giving birth, and racial discrimination.
(3) Narrow criterion A to only events that are directly experienced and witnessed, and exclude events that are learned about secondhand.
(4) Eliminate criterion A because any attempt to comprehensively define all events will always leave some ambiguity.
 
Marx and colleagues recommended option #1—keeping criterion A the way it is—because the evidence for the other options is too weak or logically indefensible.

Analysis
The review covered the relevant issues thoroughly and without bias, and came to a sensible (mostly) conclusion supported by evidence. As review articles go in psychiatry, it's one of the better ones.
The authors respected all opinions by creating four sides to the argument, but, in reality, there are only two main sides—those who want to keep it the way it is (#1) and those who want to broaden it (#2).
 
Option #3 for narrowing criterion A probably should have been the recommendation, but it’s close to splitting hairs. The gatekeeping is implemented according to #3 in all good studies based on common sense, so it does not generate many vocal supporters.
Option #4 for eliminating criterion A comes from a small but vocal, radical group who advocate for a range of other extraordinary ideas.

What’s missing was an analysis of why this debate was stoked in the first place.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Nearly all the heat, and a swarm of weak studies, for changing criterion A comes from the efforts of those who want to broaden it to include non-life-threatening events. This effort is largely ideologically-driven, not science-driven.

The strategic benefit for non-life-threat events to gain standing within PTSD is that it gives the appearance of authenticity to the premise that human nature is highly malleable to everyday stressful events of modern society (as opposed to the less common, truly terrifying, life-threatening events). This is fundamentally a difference in how one views human nature.

This view of high malleability is key to progressive leftist advocacy movements that fighting for the care of disadvantaged and minority groups must trump other personal rights and societal obligations. The same skewed moral sentiment that drives the redistribution of wealth in the welfare state and socialism to rectify harms done to the disadvantaged is the same sentiment that attempts to elevate everyday stressors—including poverty, neglect, parental incarceration, pollution, racial discrimination, transgender discrimination, and historical treatment of minority groups—to be considered harmful, traumatic events, and sometimes even public health crises, as in the cases of COVID-19 and climate change. No good research evidence exists, however, that those types of stressors cause the harm of PTSD.

If academia can control the language and ideas of science by redefining stress as life-threatening trauma, it controls an important narrative for leveraging policy, laws, and public health mandates. The attempt to redefine trauma has almost never been about science; it’s about conflating social justice with research.

 
REFERENCES
[1] Marx, Brian P; Hall-Clark, Brittany; Friedman, Matthew J; Holtzheimer, Paul; Schnurr, Paula P (2024). The PTSD Criterion A debate: A brief history, current status, and recommendations for moving forward. Journal of Traumatic Stress 37(1):5-15, doi 10.1002/jts.23007

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Source: KSHB 41 Kansas City
Read time: 1.4 minutes plus 30-second video
 
This Happened
In June, 2024, a local nonprofit called KC Healthy Kids provided trauma-informed training for librarians and staff of Kansas City public libraries.
 
Who Did This?
The training was provided by counseling psychologist Nancy Osborn, MEd, PhD with KC Healthy Kids.
Funding for the training was provided by the city of Kansas City, Missouri.
 
The Premise
The need for the training was described as library patrons often bring the problems of the outside world with them, such as not being civil, mental illness, and homeless people.
According to the KC Healthy Kids website, their training includes the standard topics of trauma-informed care:

• Teaching individuals how to spot signs of trauma
• Teaching individuals how to teach calming techniques to children
• Learning how to use self-calming techniques on yourself when you are exposed vicariously to trauma in the workplace
• Learn how to refer individuals for mental health screening or treatment
• Learn about community trauma resources

 
The 30-second video below explains what the training might accomplish: 

Another aspect that is common to all trauma-informed trainings is the claim that the science has been settled that trauma embeds itself in your body, damages brain centers, and rewires neural networks. The assertion of this neuroscience narrative is taken as settled science in trainings and serves as the crisis that makes these trainings so urgent.
 
Analysis
Despite the assertion of trainers, the science does not show conclusively that trauma damages brains. As Trauma Dispatch has documented here and here, the toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences narratives are based on weak, cross-sectional studies. When pre-trauma, prospective studies have been conducted, they consistently do not support the stress-damages-the-brain theory [1].
 
Rather than trauma causing brain changes, a more likely theory, and biologically much more plausible, is that of preexisting differences (also known as diathesis stress theory)—individuals who are vulnerable to the psychological effects of trauma had brain differences based on genetics that existed prior to experiencing trauma.
 
Does it really help to approach difficult patrons from the stance that they could be trauma victims? Here, understanding their claims of brain damage is a crucial point. Activists would like us to believe that their approach is based on science. But realizing the evidence is absent, it’s clear that trauma-informed care is an ideology, making it evident that the point is not about actually helping patrons. It’s about installing an intellectual framework in society that humans are fragile, one training at a time. This framework of human nature has been underlying progressive leftist theory since Marx’s moral prophecies were promoted as science, and can be traced even earlier in philosophies such as Rousseau’s noble savage.
As the reporter said in the video: the most important goal of training is to create a perspective shift.
 
 
REFERENCES
[1] Andrea Danese et al. "The origins of cognitive deficits in victimized children: Implications for neuroscientists and clinicians," American Journal of Psychiatry 174 (2017): 349-361.
Julia A. DiGangi et al. “Pretrauma risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review of the literature.” Clinical Psychology Review 33 (2013):728-744.
Michael S. Scheeringa. "Reexamination of diathesis stress and neurotoxic stress theories: A qualitative review of pre-trauma neurobiology in relation to posttraumatic stress symptoms," International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research (2020).
 
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Source: WESH 2 news
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
The staff of a traveling camp to help children cope with disaster held a practice camp with local agencies in Seminole County, Florida to prepare for the next hurricane.
 
Who Did This?
Project:Camp bills itself as a disaster response organization, traveling nationwide to provide free, trauma-informed childcare for families impacted by natural disasters. Based in Los Angeles, their team travels the country to set up pop-up camps, often in collaboration with a local government agency. Their website touts experience with a fire in  New Mexico, tornados in Iowa and Oklahoma, and the Maui wildfire.
Mikey Latner, a former camp director, is the founder of Project:Camp.
 
The Premise
At the practice camp, children engaged in typical camp activities, such as science and art projects, and watched movies. In addition, they were encouraged to process their feelings in gratitude circles and regular check-ins. This pilot camp was a collaboration with the Seminole County Emergency Management office.
The camps seem to have two purposes. One is to provide childcare; give children safe, fun activities while parents can focus on disaster recovery. The other is therapeutic; to help children deal with their negative feelings about the disaster. The Project:Camp website asserts that the camps use a trauma-informed model to “help break up the formation of trauma.” It’s not clear what formation of trauma means, but it likely means to reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms.
 
Analysis
The childcare aspect of the camps appear to be an imaginative method that helps parents focus their time and energy on disaster cleanup and repair. But there are many concerns about the therapeutic activities that the camp organizers do not seem aware of.
First, there doesn’t seem to be a requirement that children have emotional issues following disasters to attend the camps. It’s not clear that any children who enroll will need emotional assistance.

Second, as recent surveys have shown major increases in youths acknowledging their unhappines, arguments have been made that this may be an unintended consequence of society and overconcerned adults constantly sending messages to children that they are fragile [1]. It is possible that gratitude circles and emotional check-ins will send messages to children that they should be upset about something, which may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Third, their staff have much experience in running camps for children but do not include any licensed counselors or child development experts. Their board of directors and board of advisors also lack clinical experience.

Fourth, the developmental expectations for these children seem unrealistic. Pre-adolescent children do not have fully-developed abstraction and self-reflection skills to understand when and why they should seek emotional assistance from adults and peers. Except perhaps for the more extroverted children, children have good intuition to not disclose scary feelings to virtual strangers.

Fifth, universal interventions for individuals who are not asking for help have been shown to do more harm than good. Studies have shown that debriefing with adults immediately following traumatic events seems to worsen their symptoms [2]. Following 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina,  agencies implemented universal interventions in classrooms; there was anecdotal evidence that showing images and recounting stories of the disaster were the first exposures some children experienced. Vicarious trauma was experienced by children in schools who had previously been protected from exposure to the disaster.

Sixth, even if the camps could be helpful, it is unlikely that families will bring their children. Massive trauma treatment programs have already been attempted following 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Queensland floods and they have all failed to attract many participants, even when services were free [3].

Seventh, while camp is a fun setting that may attract more individuals than prior post-disaster programs, there is no research support for this new method. Based on the large amount of experiences with disaster programs outlined above, this type of program that aims to help children is likely to provide no real help at all, and may instead cause harm.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Promoting itself as “trauma-informed childcare” [4] the camp is another iteration of the trauma-informed approach movement that has swept over the United States and other countries in the past ten years. Trauma has become the catchword of the decade [5] and the loadstar for all progressive policies to fix society’s ills. Trauma Dispatch has documented many of these programs in schools, courts, and government policies.
 

REFERENCES
[1] Shrier; Candice L. Odgers (May 21, 2024). The panic over smartphones doesn’t help teens. It may only make things worse. The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/candice-odgers-teens-smartphones/678433/
Abigail Shrier (2024). Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Sentinel.
[2] Rose SC, Bisson J, Churchill R, Wessely S. Psychological debriefing for preventing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2002, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD000560. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000560. Accessed 23 June 2024.
[3] Scheeringa MS, Cobham VE, McDermott B (2014).  Policy and administrative issues for large-scale clinical interventions following disasters. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology 24(1), 39-46, doi: 10.1089/cap.2013.0067.
[4] Project:Camp website, https://projectcamp.co/preparing-communities
[5] Lexi Pandell (January 25, 2022). How trauma became the word of the decade. Vox, https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22876522/trauma-covid-word-origin-mental-health
 
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Source: Center on the Developing Child 6/5/24 email newsletter
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
On June 5, 2024, a group that promotes the theory of toxic stress released a report on “human variation” that adds racism to the list of stressors.
 
Who Did This?
The eleven-member National Scientific Council on the Developing Child is a private group of academic scholars on child development. The group was formed in 2003 to advocate for the narrative of toxic stress as the keystone for reforming public health policy in the United States. Since 2006, the council has been housed within the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Both the Council and the Center were founded and are run by pediatrician Jack Shonkoff. The council was formed with researchers so that their science credentials would give the council the appearance of authority. As noted in the report, their mission is to have “an evidence-based approach to science synthesis that is informed by the peer-reviewed literature and recognizes the shared opportunities for government, businesses, communities, and families to promote the well-being of all young children.”
 
The Claim
The new report released by the Council is titled “A World of Differences: The Science of Human Variation Can Drive Early Childhood Policies and Programs to Bigger Impacts. Working Paper 17.” The Council releases approximately one long working paper per year as part of the many promotional materials and infographics that the Center disseminates. These longer working papers are designed to set the intellectual framework that buttresses the Center’s advocacy efforts.
 
The main message of this working paper ostensibly was that there are individual differences in traits, or “human variations,” that make individuals vulnerable to harm and that also may limit some individuals from receiving the full benefit from childhood public health programs.
The paper did not provide details about these variations, but did mention broad group categories of parent education, family income, race, ethnicity, and community environment, and broad individual categories of temperament, aggression, and executive functions.
 
These variations that limit the effectiveness of programs should be viewed as new, crucial opportunities to reallocate funding to target certain groups.
 
Analysis
While the working paper was framed as being about a scientific issue of human variation, the emphasis was on racism. Race, racism, or systemic racism was mentioned 21 times in the 17-page report. No other type of variation received as much emphasis.
 
The paper seems to be an attempt to add racism into the framework of the toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences (ACE) movements. The conventional ACE research claims that ten ACE events can cause extraordinary damage to brains, cause physical diseases, and thereby hinder human flourishing. This paper seems to imply that racism be added to the well-known list of ten ACE stressors.
While scientist activists have been increasingly trying to link racism to neurobiological damage in recent years concurrently with efforts to promote other progressive liberal projects (i.e., critical race theory, DEI, and transgenderism), there exist no credible set of strong, reliable, or replicable evidence that racism causes permanent brain damage or physical disease. There are other more viable explanations for why certain poor health outcomes are associated with different races.
Simultaneously, the report’s recommendation that targeting certain groups based on racism can increase the impacts of childhood programs was asserted without evidence. There is no body of evidence that has shown this.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Malicious racism should, of course, be addressed in society, but this working paper takes a further step with a unique argument that racism is a toxic stress that damages brains and health. As has been noted in other Trauma Dispatch posts, both the toxic stress and ACE narratives are controversial, unproven theories that are based on weak, cross-sectional studies.
 
It was not clear in the paper why racism was suddenly emphasized after twenty years of advocating for toxic stress. As with nearly all social justice causes, as the movements drag on and the arguments become stale, advocates realize that they need to refresh the message to revitalize public interest and remain relevant. This has been called the March of Dimes syndrome after the organization that was founded in the 1930s to address polio, but was compelled to change their mission to birth defects after polio was vanquished. After twenty years of activism and sixteen previous working papers, perhaps the Council realized racism would enhance their message.
 
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Source: KSHB 41 Kansas City news
Read time: 1.5 minutes plus brief video
 
This Happened
An art installation was erected inside a popular Kansas City destination for families to raise awareness of toxic stress and how to prevent it.
 
Who Did This?
Barbara Unell, president of the Raised With Love and Limits foundation, obtained degrees in journalism and psychology, and built a long career of promoting compassion in the world. She has co-authored 17 books, including half a dozen with a child psychologist on how to discipline children. She has also been a newspaper columnist, radio host, and founder of magazines.
 
The Claim
This public health campaign is based on the toxic stress narrative that trauma permanently damages brains and causes a wide range of physical and mental problems. And the main way to prevent these problems is for children to have at least one nurturing parent relationship.
The art installation was erected inside Kansas City Union Station, which is a mixed-use railway station that houses museums, traveling exhibits, a live theater, a movie theater, and a planetarium. The 45-second video below was filmed while the installation was being erected, and includes a message from Unell. Note: The arcade activities shown in the video are not part of the art installation.

​Analysis
Unell clearly has compassion for helping others. Passion, however, does not help anybody if the intellectual framework behind it is flawed. The science behind toxic stress has been debunked. And despite many attempts over many years, simplistic public health campaigns have not been able to prevent traumatic events of abuse and violence.
 
Contrary to the many other toxic stress campaigns in the United States, instead of alarming citizens of the dangers of trauma, this one emphasizes that prevention is possible by the presence of a single nurturing adult. This aspect of the toxic stress narrative has been increasingly emphasized by activists in recent years because they realized that their message that trauma damages brains was depressing and unhopeful.

The logic of this campaign is fuzzy. It’s not clear if Unell believes a parent can prevent adverse events from happening, or prevent the harmful consequences after events happen, or both.
It’s also unclear how this activity center will create supportive parents. It seems unlikely that a brief encounter with educational material in an art installation will create lasting parenting changes.

Further, it seems that the parents who are able and willing to bring their children to the center are already loving and responsible parents. The parents who are not able or willing to bring their children are the ones most likely to need intervention.

The advice that children need nurturing parents is, of course, common sense. But there is no research study that shows trauma or stressful events can be substantially prevented. And there is no research study that shows harmful effects that might follow trauma events can be prevented by early psychological intervention [1], medication [2], or a relationship.
 
REFERENCES
[1] Rose SC, Bisson J, Churchill R, Wessely S. Psychological debriefing for preventing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2002, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD000560. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000560. Accessed 16 June 2024
[2] Bertolini F; Robertson L; Bisson JI; Meader N; Churchill R; Ostuzzi G; Stein DJ; Williams T; Barbui C (2024). Early pharmacological interventions for prevention of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in individuals experiencing acute traumatic stress symptoms. [Review] Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 5:CD013613, 2024 May 20.

 
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Source: Arizona State University News
Read time: 2.0 minutes
 
This Happened
On June 4, Arizona State University held a virtual, all-day conference for educators called the Trauma-Sensitive School Symposium.
 
Who Did This?
The organizer was Sarah Lindstrom Johnson, associate professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics. She holds a PhD in public health. Johnson has been first or secondary author on over 80 peer-reviewed publications that focused on school climate, trauma-informed practices, and bullying.
 
The Premise
The trauma-informed movement advocates a wide range of loosely-defined concepts. The goals for this conference included recognizing the signs of trauma, implementing culturally responsive interventions, and creating compassionate spaces for student well-being. Common to all efforts in the movement is a framework that there is almost always a reason for a person’s behavior—there are no inherent traits of dysfunction—and the reason is usually trauma.
This was the eighth conference in the Arizona State series. In 2023, the conference was attended by over 700 educators.
Lindstrom Johnson is one of many scientist advocates supported by their universities who are aggressively promoting the trauma-informed ideology.
 
Analysis
Because the trauma-informed concept is a list of practices that cover so many different and loosely-defined things, it does not represent a standardized or coherent technique, which makes it nearly impossible to study.
The key underlying premise of trauma-informed trainings is always to install an intellectual framework more than it is to recommend specific tasks. The framework is to convince participants that trauma has impacts on everyone—children, families, teachers–and the impacts are wide-ranging across physical health, mental health, and ability to function in daily life.
 
If you remove evidence-based psychotherapy treatment for PTSD, which was supported by research well before the trauma-informed movement started, from the list of practices, there are no research studies that show trauma-informed practices can improve any outcomes of substance.
 
Even reviews that are sympathetic to the movement acknowledge the absence of evidence. For example, a recent review of trauma-informed practices in healthcare concluded, “Our first important finding is that the empirical evidence base for the effectiveness of trauma-informed organisational change interventions in primary care and community mental healthcare is very limited” [1].
 
Why Is This Happening?
Postmodern activists' attempts to leverage the concept of trauma as an oppressive force that determines all the disadvantaged groups in society has been operational for nearly thirty years. This trauma paradigm arose from psychologist- and psychiatrist-activists and then found traction in social work and counselor training programs that are focused on social justice. This trauma ideology expanded outside of psychology at the same time as popularity rose for other progressive movements such as critical race theory, DEI, and transgenderism. They all share an underlying reframing of human nature as fragile and highly malleable.
 
Attendees at these types of conferences tend to be a subgroup of progressive educators who wish to redefine the traditional role of teachers. They believe children are fragile and need to be protected from every life challenge by teachers who take on mental health and auxiliary parenting duties. Greg Lukianoff and Johnathan Haidt described this phenomenon at the university level in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind. Abigail Shrier described this at the elementary and high school level in her 2024 book Bad Therapy. Conservative activists like Christopher Rufo have taken action against progressive schools and have been at the forefront of dismantling woke policies in educational settings [2].
 
 
REFERENCES
[1] Natalia V. Lewis, Angel Bierce, Gene S. Feder, John Macleod, Katrina M. Turner, Stan Zammit, Shoba Dawson, "Trauma-Informed Approaches in Primary Healthcare and Community Mental Healthcare: A Mixed Methods Systematic Review of Organizational Change Interventions", Health & Social Care in the Community, vol. 2023, Article ID 4475114, 18 pages, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/4475114
[2] Christopher F. Rufo (November 28, 2023). The Fight for New College. A short documentary on the counterrevolution in higher education. Substack. https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-fight-for-new-college
 
 
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Source: Fox SA news
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
A specialty court in the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan area that deals with domestic violence recently received certification as an agency trained in trauma-informed care
 
Who Did This?
This specialty court is the brainchild of Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez who was elected to the bench in 2018 and then spearheaded the creation of this specialty court to use a more therapeutic approach to justice. A registered Democrat, she is openly gay and advocates for LGBTQ issues [1]. The judge is married to psychologist Stacy Speedlin Gonzalez who helped advocate for the specialty court.
In 2020, the judge was sanctioned by the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct and ordered to remove a pride flag and other pride paraphernalia from her courtroom after a local defense lawyer filed a complaint. The judge claimed this was a personal attack because she believed the defense lawyer was homophobic and xenophobic [2]. The defense lawyer, however, Flavio Hernandez, appears to be Hispanic, as is Speedlin Gonzalez. The judge appealed the order and won four years later. She did not return the flag to court because she didn’t want to deal with more potential grievances [3].
In 2022, Transportation Security Administration agents found a handgun in the judge’s carry-on bag as she tried to board a plane. The gun had a loaded magazine inserted in it and a bullet chambered [4]. She paid a $2,475 fine 9 [5].
 
The certification comes from The Ecumenical  Center, based in San Antonio. The center provides counseling, workshops, and other community services.
 
The Premise
Judge Speedlin Gonzalez’s specialty court was created in 2020 to work with first-time domestic violence offenders who also struggle with substance abuse. It takes a public health approach to develop treatment plans for perpetrators to access community services. The judge meets with perpetrators every other week to make sure they are following their treatment plans [6]. Once those first-time offenders complete the one-year requirement, their case is dismissed and expunged, giving them what the judge says is a true second chance. 
 
Analysis
Other courts in the world have adopted trauma-informed frameworks but were not awarded a certification. The certification has no formal standing with judicial practice or government agencies. It is a product created by the South Texas Trauma Informed Care Consortium, which is a group formed in 2018 in partnership with the City of San Antonio Metro Health department and a local health center. The Ecumenical Center serves as the certifying entity for the Consortium.
 
Details were not provided, but if it was like other trauma-informed trainings it would have included few actionable practices to implement. Trauma-informed training is more about the installation of an intellectual framework to indoctrinate participants to believe that life-threatening trauma impacts health, emotions, behaviors, character traits, and relationships. Victims of trauma thereby need to be treated as fragile and require special handling to avoid being retriggered and further damaged. It was not clear how the trauma-informed certification would alter court practices.
 
Consistent with this framework, Speedlin Gonzalez does not consider the perpetrators in her court to be criminals. Instead, they are victims of trauma. “We get them sober, we treat the trauma, we give them skills so that they don’t come back into the criminal justice system and do not reoffend and that opens bed at the jail for true criminals not traumatized people that have mental health issues,” said Speedlin Gonzalez.
 
The executive director of the Ecumenical Center, which provided the certification, claimed the trauma-informed care approach has been proven to work. There are, however, little to no research data showing that employees who are forced to take trauma-informed training have knowledge deficits that necessitate the training. Rather, supporters of trauma-informed care assert that such training is an implied good that can’t be anything but helpful. Research studies have shown that participants in trauma-informed trainings often perceive themselves to be better informed and more competent, but there is zero evidence that trainings improve outcomes of any type of agency work.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Trauma-informed care is part of the spectrum of neo-Marxist, postmodern ideologies that assert humans are highly malleable from oppressive forces in society. Programs have been springing up frequently in the past ten years in schools, medicine, addiction, and nonprofit charities that focus on social justice. The ideology also finds traction with judges with utopian visions for rehabilitating criminals.
 
It’s unusual to see faith-based organizations promoting the trauma-informed movement, probably because of the underlying radical premise of the trauma-informed movement that there is no inherent fixed human nature and all aspects of humans are highly malleable from environment. Perhaps the Ecumenical Center is involved because, in the ecumenical mission of trying to bring together disparate Christian denominations, the Center believes the trauma-informed ideology shares a utopian vision of a better world.
 
 
REFERENCES
[1] Trellis. Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez: Professional background and legal expertise. Accessed 6/8/2024. https://trellis.law/judge/rosie.speedlin.gonzalez
[2] Elizabeth Kuhr, NBC News (4/21/2020). Texas judge says she was forced to remove pride flag from courtoom. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/texas-judge-says-she-was-forced-remove-pride-flag-courtroom-n1188891
[3] The Whitley Law Firm (3/1/2023). Bexar County judge wins appeal on displaying rainbow flag in courtroom. Accessed 6/8/2024.
[4] Dillon Collier, KSAT.com (9/27/2022). ‘Oversight on my part’: Judge Speedlin Gonzalez found with loaded gun at San Antonio International Airport. Accessed 6/8/2024. https://www.ksat.com/news/ksat-investigates/2022/09/27/oversight-on-my-part-judge-speedlin-gonzalez-found-with-loaded-gun-at-san-antonio-international-airport/
[5] Dillon Collier, KSAT.com (10/14/2022). Judge Speedlin Gonzalez pays $2,475 fine for loaded gun incident at San Antonio International Airport. Accessed 6/8/2024. https://www.ksat.com/news/ksat-investigates/2022/10/14/judge-speedlin-gonzalez-pays-2475-fine-for-loaded-gun-incident-at-san-antonio-international-airport/
[6] The Bexar County Specialty Courts Coalition Resource Guide 2021. Accessed 6/8/2024). https://www.bexar.org/DocumentCenter/View/23613/BCSC-Coalition-Resource-Guide-PDF?bidId=
 
 
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Source: Newsweek
Read time: 1.5 minutes
 
This Happened
In Tacoma, Washington, 175 residents will be given $500 per month for twelve months to spend any way they want to help combat toxic stress. The program, called GRIT 2.0, started cash disbursements in April 2024.
 
Who Is Doing This?
The program is the brainchild of Victoria Woodards, the mayor of Tacoma since 2018. She sees her role as mayor is to embed equity into every policy to transform the city into being anti-racist. She makes decisions based on the Tacoma Equity Index, which rates neighborhoods on 32 indicators. For example, instead of fixing street lights based on who called to complain, she fixes street lights in neighborhoods where more equity is needed. Her administration has an Office of Equity and Human Rights that she helped establish, a Chief Equity Officer, and each city department must have a Racial Equity Action Plan [1]. Woodards was one of eleven mayors who founded Mayors For A Guaranteed Income in 2020 [2].
Despite her efforts, the city has struggled with a doubling of violent crime [3] and attracts large numbers of homeless people.
 
The Premise
Cash payments come from the Growing Resilience in Tacoma (GRIT) program. It was created in 2020 by Mayor Woodards as a way to demonstrate that cash to low-income families can reduce “toxic stress, improve economic stability, increase housing security, and improve health and well-being” [4].
 
In 2021-2022, GRIT 1.0 gave $500 per month to 110 participants for 13 months for a total of $715,000. Funding came mostly from a grant from Mayors for a Guaranteed Income [5].
 
GRIT 2.0 is a slight expansion of the program to 175 families.
 
Analysis
Prior to launching GRIT 2.0, there was no outcome evaluation of GRIT 1.0 to determine if any of the outcomes related to toxic stress were achieved such as improved economic stability, housing security, mental health, or reduced poverty.
Supporters of cash assistance programs claim that support for a guaranteed income is as old as the United States [6]. Supporters fail to mention that much of that support has been suggestions to reform an unfair and wasteful welfare program, and often included incentives to work, as opposed to GRIT, which is an unconditional cash transfer.
 
Cash transfers have been criticized as creating resentment, disincentivizing people to work, and morally wrong. National support has failed to materialize for these programs due in part to long-standing criticisms that they take money from people who work hard and give it to those who refuse to work or who purposefully have children out of wedlock.  A 2017 review of 34 programs optimistically concluded that the effectiveness of cash transfers “remains very uncertain,” while failing to find any robust effects [7].
 
Trauma Dispatch has documented the lack of evidence for the toxic stress narrative here.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Dozens of small programs across the United States have been created for giving no-strings-attached funds to low-income individuals. All of these happened in areas run by progressive leftist politicians whose ideology is consistent with Marxist theory that problems of individuals are created by oppressors in society, and Communist- and socialist-style government solutions are needed to redistribute wealth. The Mayors for a Guaranteed Income coalition plans to use these programs to advocate for a federally-supported guaranteed income [8]
 
This is an example of how the false narrative of toxic stress is leveraged by radical leftists. Victoria Woodards appears to have visions of utopian societies and justifies her policy decisions by claiming they are based on the science of toxic stress.
 

REFERENCES
[1] Podcast. The Data-Smart City Pod 5/15/2023. Ep57 From Intent to Impact: Mayor Victoria Woodards on Equity. Bloomberg Center for Cities, Harvard University.  https://datasmart.hks.harvard.edu/intent-impact-mayor-victoria-woodards-equity
[2] Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (June 29, 2020). Press release: Mayors across the U.S. launch gauranteed income initiative. Accessed 6/4/24, https://economicsecurityproject.org/news/mayors-across-the-u-s-launch-guaranteed-income-initiative/
[3] KIRO 7 news. October 5, 2022. Violent crime nearly doubled in the past year.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tacoma-mayor-discusses-priorities-city-faces-rising-crime/BTQUAIW5WNEZLE4MSJVZP2KIQI/
[4] United Way of Pierce County. Growing Resilience in Tacoma (GRIT)—a guaranteed income demonstration. Accessed 6/4/24. https://www.uwpc.org/growing-resilience-tacoma-grit-guaranteed-income-demonstration
[5] KUOW/ NPR network (8/12/21), Mayor Woodard on how Tacoma’s guaranteed income pilot gives new meaning to ‘grit.’ https://www.kuow.org/stories/tacoma-joins-nationwide-guaranteed-income-pilot-project-ef0d
[6] Mayors for a Guaranteed Income home page, accessed 6/4/24. https://www.mayorsforagi.org/
[7] Pega, Frank; Pabayo, Roman; Benny, Claire; Lee, Eun-Young; Lhachimi, Stefan; Liu, Sze (2022). “Unconditional cash transfers for reducing poverty and vulnerabilities: Effect on use of health services and health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2022 (3): CD011135. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD011135.pub3. 
[8] Strozewski, Zoe {7/3/2021), More U.S. mayors interested in gauranteed income programs after early successes, Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/more-us-mayors-interested-guaranteed-income-programs-after-early-successes-1612568
 
 
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Source: WTRF news
Read time: 1.5 minutes plus short video
 
This Happened
On April 29, 2024, a local nonprofit charity provided a free information workshop for the community on the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) theory and how to be resilient to stress.
 
Who Did This?
The Brooke Hancock Family Resource Network is a nonprofit charity which has been led by Director Janna Gordon since 2022.  Brooke and Hancock are the two smallest counties in West Virginia, nestled in the northern panhandle sliver of West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
  
The Premise
The workshop informed participants about the alleged harmful impact of ACEs and techniques to build resilience to stress. In the 30-second video of the workshop below, it briefly shows a participant thumbing through a deck of 52 cards which included the 10 ACEs depicted as aces found in playing cards.
 
The deck also includes 42 “resilience strategies” depicted in the suit of hearts. Some of them seem like reactions that can counter stress, such as developing self-esteem, and hope. Many of them, however, have no clear relation to dealing with stress and seem like everyday advice on how to socially cooperate, such as having clear expectations and rules, learning responsibility, experiencing success, modeling appropriate behavior, helping a friend, trust, a sense of belonging, and showing empathy.

Analysis
Workshops like these are concerning because they teach participants that they are fragile, when evidence, and empirical experience, indicates they are not. As writer Abigail Shrier emphasized in her new book Bad Therapy, industries of professions that deal with children, such as counselors and educators, treat children as if they are fragile and should be afraid of everyday stressors, which may be more likely to instill harmful anxieties rather than foster resilience and self-reliance [1]. This tends to be the philosophy of progressive leftist policies.
 
The deck of cards seems like a clever way to engage with participants, especially youths who are less disposed to self-reflect in one-on-one conversations with adult counselors. They are, however, mostly common sense that may seem patronizing to youths who already have adequate social skills. A concern is that it teaches individuals that any of their unhappiness is due to life experiences that molded their characters, instead of the more likely explanation that they were born with heritable character flaws. It teaches them to blame their problems on society or on someone else. It’s a potentially counterproductive strategy for teaching people to not look inward to truly deal with inborn limitations.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Trainings like these are held frequently across the United States by nonprofits and university centers to try to focus community efforts on ACEs to improve societal problems. These are the grassroots backbone of the ACE movement that promotes an unproven theory that physical diseases and inequities in society are caused by stressful life experiences.
 
 
REFERENCES
[1] Abigail Shrier (2024), Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Sentinel: New York
 
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