Source: Framingham Source
Read time: 1.5 minutes plus 1-minute video
 
This Happened
In December 2024, MassBay Community College posted a promotion for a new educational video that explains “the urgency of adopting trauma-informed practices in higher education.”
 
Who Did This?
The video is a product of the Institute for Trauma, Adversity, and Resilience in Higher Education of MassBay Community College. The Institute aims at “transforming how higher education addresses the impact of trauma and adversity on adult learners.”
Jeanie Tietjen Ph.D., a professor of English, founded the Institute in 2009 and continues to run it. She has conducted no research and published no papers on trauma or PTSD. She authored one book chapter on trauma-informed practices in colleges.
 
The Premise
The premise of the Institute, and the topic of the video, is that adult learners who have experienced trauma cannot succeed in the classroom unless widespread accommodations are provided for them.
The five-minute video explains an ominous situation. The 68-second clips from the video (below) shows several scenes explaining the Institute’s beliefs about the insidiousness of trauma.

In addition, the Institute provides other resources describing transgender as a valid construct, perceived mistreatment on campuses causes mental and physical problems for lesbian and gay individuals, and perceived racial discrimination is the equivalent of trauma.
 
Analysis
Readers will recognize many problematic concepts within the Institute’s approach. The premise of The Body Keeps The Score—that trauma permanently damages brains, has been debunked (see here). ACEs is unproven primarily because one hundred percent of ACE studies are cross-sectional and no biological mechanism has been validated (see here). Complex PTSD—the source of the catchphrase “It’s What Happened to You”—is not a real disorder, and instead is a cultural phenomenon of research activists (see here).

Their intent is to install a false intellectual framework about Fragilism, that the world is divided into oppressed and oppressors, and all disparities in society are due to environmental causes.
If the professors promoting trauma were truly an altruistic group interested in evidence instead of ideology, these concepts would be widely exposed as fallacies. But with the capture of the social sciences in academia—with over 90% of professors liberal—there are hardly any serious debates (see here).

[The Institute's full 5-minute is available here.]

Source: Alabama Daily News
Read time: 2.1 minutes
 
This Happened
On February 17, 2025, the Alabama Department of Mental Health (ADMH) announced the launch of a pilot program to train providers across the state in the Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) model.
 
Who Is Doing This?
Kim Boswell, MSW, ADMH Commissioner since December 2020, spearheaded the project. The pilot will be conducted in partnership with Gateway, a non-profit organization based in Birmingham. Gateway previously received a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to train its own staff in this model.
 
The Premise
The attendees at the training will be ADMH leadership and mental health staff who work with schools. The Department hopes to eventually expand the initiative to every provider that works with children in the state.
 
The TST model is designed for children living with poverty, racism, inadequate schools, and community violence [1]. Thus, it is not for all types of trauma victims. The unique TST definition of traumatized children in such systems is those who have difficulty regulating their emotions and behavior, combined with inadequate social environments that are unable to protect them from reminders of threats [2]. Hence, much of the focus in TST is to address systems in which children exist, rather than individual psychotherapy.
The model posits a belief that recovery occurs in five hierarchical phases: 1. Surviving, 2. Stabilizing, 3. Enduring, 4. Understanding, and 5. Transcending.
 
Critical to the model is the belief in the theory of toxic stress in which humans are fragile and trauma permanently damages brains. Child victims are so fragile that insensitive classrooms can trigger them emotionally and cause disruptive behaviors and academic failure.
 
The purpose of the trainings is to install the intellectual framework for the TST model. As Boswell stated, “The model really is both a clinical model and an organizational model, and really where you have to start is having your leadership understanding trauma and how that impacts the behavior of kids.”
The desired outcomes of the project will be a decrease in the number of children being removed from families, an increase in the number of families willing to foster children, and an overall improvement in child mental wellbeing.
 
The governor’s budget denied ADMH’s request for funding for 2026. But Boswell feels so strongly about the program, she promised to find funds from elsewhere.
 
Analysis
Minimal, and mostly negative, evidence exists on the ability of TST to treat trauma. One trial showed improvements but lacked a control group [1,3].
The only existing randomized trial was tiny (10 in TST versus 10 in care-as-usual) and failed to show improvement on total PTSD scores within the TST group [4].

 Complex PTSD is another model that conflates stress with trauma. Saxe, however, has opted to develop his own model that shares a highly similar conceptualization of trauma responses. The TST model emphasizes treating attachment and emotional dysregulation, which makes it indistinguishable from complex PTSD.
 
Another concern about TST is the five-phase model is completely unvalidated. There is zero systematic evidence that recovery from stress proceeds according to phases. In the history of psychiatry, whenever sequential phases have been posited, they have always been found to be overly simplistic and unrealistic [6,7].
 
Dissemination of the TST model across Alabama’s providers who work with children will be a disaster. Not only does if fail to treat true trauma, it will waste resources and funding, it spreads disinformation that humans are fragile and that trauma damages brains, conflates stress with trauma, and promotes the fake complex PTSD concept.
 
​
References
[1] Saxe GN, Ellis BH, Fogler J, Hansen S, and Sorkin B (2005). Comprehensive Care for Traumatized Children. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), 443–448. DOI: 10.3928/00485713-20050501-10.
[2] Navalta CP, Brown AD, Nisewaner A, Ellis BH, and Saxe GN (2013). Trauma systems therapy. In Treating complex traumatic stress disorders in children and adolescents: Scientific foundations and therapeutic models. (pp. 329–347).
[3] Ellis BH, Fogler J, Hansen S, Forbes P, Navalta CP, and Saxe G (2012). Trauma systems therapy: 15-month outcomes and the importance of effecting environmental change. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 4(6), 624–630. DOI: 10.1037/a0025192.
[4] Saxe GN, Ellis BH, Fogler J, and Navalta CP (2012). Innovations in practice: Preliminary evidence for effective family engagement in treatment for child traumatic stress–trauma systems therapy approach to preventing dropout. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 17(1), 58–61. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-3588.2011.00626.x.
[5] DePierro J, D’Andrea W, Spinazzola J, Stafford E, van Der Kolk B, Saxe G, Stolbach B, McKernan S, and Ford JD (2022). Beyond PTSD: Client presentations of developmental trauma disorder from a national survey of clinicians. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 14(7), 1167–1174. DOI: 10.1037/tra0000532.
[6] Littell J, Girvin H (2002). Stages of Change: A Critique. Behavior Modification 26(2):223-23. DOI: 10.1177/0145445502026002006.
[7] Stroebe M, Schut H, and Boerner K (2017). Cautioning health-care professionals: bereaved persons are misguided through the stages of grief. Omega 74, 455–473. DOI: 10.1177/0030222817691870.

CATEGORY: CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND IDEAS

Source: TBnewswatch.com
Read time: 1.6 minutes
 
This Happened
In October 2024, Children’s Centre Thunder Bay announced the launch of a new education campaign on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
 
Who Did This?
Children's Centre Thunder Bay is a non-profit organization funded by the Canadian national government, Ontario government, and charitable foundations. It is a multi-service organization that provides mental health, child development and parenting services to children and their families living in the Thunder Bay District.
The two-year campaign received $200,000 in funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
 
The Premise
The aim of the project is to spread the narrative of ACEs to the community by raising awareness and provide resources to mitigate the alleged impacts of ACEs. They launched the project with a training session for several social service agencies. They taught the usual ACE pedagogy that the effects of stressful childhood events can cause adulthood severe physical disease, mental health disorders, and dysfunctional quality of life.
One method of instilling the pedagogy is the interactive Brain Architecture Game in which participants construct brain models with colorful pipe cleaners. This is “a fun, interactive, and engaging way” to learn, said Rene Monsma, project lead. (pictured above). They plan to roll out more of these trainings to schools and business communities.
 
Analysis
This project is another example of the international effort to promote ACEs as a diagnosis of many of society’s ills and a blueprint for Leftist progressive social policies.

“It is about acknowledging that parenting and caregiving and raising kids is a community job,” said Diane Walker, CEO of Children’s Centre Thunder Bay (picture above). That could be a helpful philosophy if it didn’t so often mean liberal progressive programs that tend to undermine the nuclear family and other traditional concepts.
 
Why Is This Happening?
Events like this promoting ACEs have been happening for the past fifteen years around the United States nearly every week in the form of conferences, workshops, and professional development trainings. Trauma Dispatch has documented some of their content here, here, and here, and the lack of scientific evidence for the ACEs theory here.
Non-profit organizations often act as quasi-governmental extensions to accomplish political projects that  governments can’t do as easily and that were never voted on by the public. Government funds can be funneled to non-profits under humanitarian objectives with little debate or citizen input.

Source: Centers for Disease Control
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
In October 2024, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released the findings from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), which included the first nationally-representative report on adverse childlhood experiences (ACEs) reported by children instead of adults.
 
Who Did This?
Senior author was Phyllis Holditch Niolon, PhD, the senior advisor for ACEs in the Division of Violence Prevention at CDC. She coordinates the Division's work on prevention of ACEs, and has published approximately eight papers promoting ACEs.
First author, Elizabeth Swedo, MD, is a pediatrician who works in the Division.
 
The Premise
The ACE data were gathered from 17,838 students in grades 9-12 with self-report surveys. The YRBS is administered every two years. The 2023 version was the first national survey asking children to self-report on ACEs. Items covered eight of the 10 original ACE items:

1. Emotional abuse
2. Physical abuse
3. Sexual abuse
4. Physical neglect
5. Witnessed intimate partner violence
6. Household substance use
7. Household poor mental health
8. Incarcerated or detained parent or guardian

 
(9) Emotional neglect and (10) Divorce / abandoned by parent were not asked.
 
The authors found the usual finding that has been found in dozens of prior ACE studies that a higher number of ACEs correlates with increased poor health outcomes, such as substance abuse, obesity, feelings of sadness, and thoughts of suicide. Correlations were also found with “health risk behaviors,” including bringing a weapon to school, being in a physical fight, and sexually active with multiple people.
 
Analysis
Critical analysis of this survey raises several concerns. First, the most common ACE, emotional abuse was endorsed by the majority of children (61.5%). It is inconceivable that the majority of American children truly believe they are abused by their parents.
The wording of the survey question was “During your life, how often has a parent or other adult in your home insulted you or put you down?” Obviously, the wording of this question does not rise to the level of abnormally negative parenting that has malicious intent to children. This question could easily be endorsed when parents try too hard to coach children on sports, for example.
Many of the endorsements for emotional abuse and the other items are undoubtedly false positives, which would not be surprising. I recently published the first study to document that false positive endorsements of traumatic life events are common [1]. It is not a leap to think the same is true of non-traumatic, everyday stressful events. Self-reports must be verified by interviewers to be credible.
 
Second, surveys like this are now routinely given to children in schools. They carry the implied message that life experiences may be harmful, or else the government would not take the time to ask about them. These frequent surveys may be conditioning children with repetition to believe they may be fragile, which is contributing to the current misperception that a child mental health crisis exists. In addition to the eight ACE items, the survey for high school students asked about 53 other possibly harmful activities.

There are, however, no studies that measured health status prior to the experiences of ACEs. One hundred percent of ACE studies have been cross-sectional.
The far more likely explanation for the correlation of ACEs with physical diseases later in life is that bad things do not happen at random. Children who are placed in adverse situations by their parents likely have parents with genetic profiles that make them less competent at managing themselves and their children, and, in addition, predispose them to more physical and mental diseases. Parents pass these genetic profiles to their children, who are then more likely to develop physical and mental diseases for genetic reasons, not because of stressful childhood experiences. Authors of ACE studies almost never consider this possibility.
 
Why Did This Happen?
ACEs is part and parcel of the leftist progressive narrative of Fragilism, that the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor, and all poor outcomes of disadvantaged people in the world must be due to environmental causes, not genetics.
The only rationale the CDC can promote for collecting ACE data is that ACEs are harmful, and further, that ACEs can be prevented. If they cannot be prevented, there is no sensible reason to spend the time and money on repeatedly measuring them. The CDC report claimed, “Preventing ACEs is possible and achievable,” and they cited the CDC’s resource guide on prevention.
Despite the guide’s assurances, there are, however, no good data that ACEs—abuse, divorce, parents being incarcerated, parental mental disorders—can be prevented. Multiple commentaries from experts have demonstrated some backbone to speak out about the foolishness of screening people for ACE scores [2,3], one of which, oddly, included some of the authors of the CDC report [4].
 
References
[1} Scheeringa MS (2025). False positives for Criterion A trauma events and PTSD symptoms with questionnaires are common in children and adolescents and could not be eliminated with enhanced instructions. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, DOI: 10.1089/cap.2024.0126. Free preprint here (publication #94).
[2] Anda RF, Porter LE, Brown DW (2020). Inside the Adverse Childhood Experience Score: Strengths, Limitations, and Misapplications. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 59(2):293−295; DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2020.01.009.
[3] John D. McLennan, Andrea Gonzalez, Harriet L. MacMillan, Tracie O. Afifi, Routine screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) still doesn't make sense, Child Abuse & Neglect, 2024, DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.106708.
[4] Austin AE, Anderson KN, Goodson M, Niolon PH, Swedo EA, Terranella A, Bacon S. Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Critical Appraisal. Pediatrics. 2024 Dec 1;154(6):e2024067307. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2024-067307.

Source: European Journal of Psychotraumatology
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
A literature review summarized the state of the evidence for psychotherapy techniques to treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in very young children (0-6 years) [1].
 
Who Did This?
Nina Moner, is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Côte d’Azur, France.
 
The Premise
The literature review identified seven techniques that have been studied. These included seven randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and eight single-arm studies with no control group.
 
(1) Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has been tested with four RCTs. Two of these studies used active treatment control groups, one used a wait-list control group, and one compared two CBT versions. CBT was the only technique with more than one RCT. All four RCTs were effective with follow-ups from 3-12 months. Each used slightly different variations of CBT. (Disclaimer: I conducted one of these RCTs).
 
(2) Prolonged exposure therapy, one of the most common techniques used with adults, had one RCT with a developmentally adapted version called dyadic exposure therapy (DET). It was significantly more effective than non-directive supportive therapy.
 
(3) Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) had one RCT, which was effective. It is intended for children exposed to interpersonal or marital violence. CPP is a psychodynamic technique based on the premise that child psychological problems are best addressed within the attachment relationship. Studies, however, have neither demonstrated that parent-child relationships are disturbed at the start of therapy nor attempted to measure children’s symptoms and attachment security simultaneously.
CPP is immensely popular in academia and some clinical circles, but it possesses the enormous drawback of being a 50-week intervention. That is logistically inconceivable for all but the most intractable, and possibly over-dependent, patients.
 
(4) Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) has zero RCTs. It has one tiny (n = 9) uncontrolled study in 4-8 years-old children. The review neglected to mention that it is developmentally impossible for young children to cooperate with the bilateral eye movements. Therapists must improvise bilateral stimulation with audio, vibrators, or tapping, which I believe makes the technique unfeasible.
 
Three other techniques had support from single studies. (5) Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT), designed for oppositional children, not trauma, had one uncontrolled study. (6) Early Pathways, a home-based technique for families in poverty, had one RCT. (7) Eye movement integration (EMI) had one uncontrolled study. All had promising preliminary results.
 
Play therapy had zero systematic group studies.
 
In regards to whether young children can understand and cooperate with any of the treatment techniques, only one study attempted to measure this. One CBT study determined that children understood all the activities and performed them, with a gradient of skill from 3 to 6 years [2].
 
Analysis
Overall, this review was a breath of fresh air. Instead of the typical ideology of oppression and lack of equipoise found in many trauma papers, this review reported facts in a straightforward fashion. This review, however, raises at least three important issues.
First, the discussion included an entire section on different techniques to intervene on the parent-child relationship (CPP impacts attachment, DET for parents with their own PTSD, etc.). The authors missed an opportunity to dispel the folk myth that parents or parenting behaviors need to be treated for young children to recover from PTSD. We showed in my CBT trial that neither maternal PTSD nor depression had an impact on child improvement at the end of treatment [3]. As long as caregivers bring their children to therapy and cooperate with the methods, they all get better.
 
Second, the inclusion criteria included children from 0 to 6 years of age, but the authors did not accurately represent the situation of children younger than 3 years of age. They noted that “we still have insufficient information about PTSD symptom presentations during the first three years,” implying that we need additional research on treating PTSD in this group. Instead, they should have stated that there are no documented cases of children in the world with full PTSD younger than three years. That is not for a lack of case reports. There are many case reports and they all illustrate absence of the full diagnosis. This is due to still-emerging cognitive, abstract, and verbal capacities in this age group. Treatment of children below three years with conditioned-responses to trauma reminders need simple parent-management advice to help avoid those reminders until the response disappears.

They tried to get Psychology Today to censor and take down my post. Despite their exaggerated claims, the fact remains that there are no credible research trials of play therapy for PTSD in any age group (see here).

 
References
[1] Moner N, Soubelet A, Villard P & Askenazy F (2024) Individual psychological interventions and therapies for posttraumatic stress disorder and posttraumatic stress symptoms in young children: a systematic review, European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 15:1, DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2024.2432161
[2] Scheeringa MS, Weems CF, Cohen JA, Amaya-Jackson L, Guthrie D (2011). Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in three through six year-old children: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52, 8, 853-860. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02354.x
[3] Weems CF, Scheeringa MS (2013).  Maternal depression and treatment gains following a cognitive behavioral intervention for posttraumatic stress in preschool children. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 27(1), 140-146. DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdix.2012.11.003.

Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
On February 26, 2025, the body of Gene Hackman was discovered. Many obituaries repeated the story that childhood trauma made him who he was. One story was titled “The Early Trauma That Fueled Gene Hackman’s Singular Genius.”
Trauma Biography Myth
​When 13-years-old, Hackman, his younger brother, and father were living with his grandmother. While playing in the street, his dad drove past and waved casually without melodrama, abandoning his sons allegedly without explanation. The article asserted this was a devastating childhood trauma seared into Hackman’s psyche: “You can see it for yourself in the waves Hackman exchanges with Fernando Rey in The French Connection” (photo above).
Hackman seemed to believe this narrative explained why he became an actor. In 2013, he told a reporter, “I doubt I would’ve become so sensitive to human behavior if that hadn’t happened to me as a child — if I hadn’t realized how much one small gesture can mean.”

Stories like Hackman’s are a ubiquitous form of trauma biography in the backgrounds of famous people in which childhood events, bad or good, caused their destinies. A few examples include Kevin Costner became a daydreamer because his father’s job required the family to move frequently. Marilyn Monroe became an unstable personality which caused her to become an actress because she lived in multiple foster homes.
In the recent biography of Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson wrote, “The PTSD from his childhood also instilled in him an aversion to contentment.” Isaacson simply asserted Musk has PTSD. Several childhood events were described that might be considered trauma (beatings from bullying, verbal rants from his father, and witnessed community violence in South Africa), but Isaacson  neither bothered to specify which event gave Musk PTSD nor asked whether Musk considered any of the events traumatic. Musk has made it clear he has never been to a therapist (and has therefore never been diagnosed). Yet Isaacson was comfortable assuming Musk had PTSD, as if implying, how could any human not have PTSD from that childhood?
 
The concern about trauma biography is the erroneous claim that childhood trauma shapes an individual’s fundamental personality development. Failing to observe the simplest of scientific principles that correlation is not causation, biographers seem oblivious that there is no credible evidence that the hard-wired, genetically-based process of human personality development can be derailed by a handful of life events.
 
Intergenerational Trauma Myth
Another popular belief is claiming that parents’ trauma gets passed down to children. Julian Lennon felt rejected when his famous dad, John Lennon, had little contact with him, and this was somehow an inevitable cycle because John’s father had abandoned him as a child.
Tyler Perry appears to have suffered real trauma as a child when beaten by his father. But Perry insisted that his public telling of it must include that his father had been orphaned and was beaten by the husband of the couple that took him in, and the husband had been mistreated as a slave. Each generation of beating somehow embedded into the psyche and biology to create new involuntary beatings in the next generation.
The son of Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould believes he has somehow inherited intergenerational trauma from both parents. His mother lost her father as an infant and her step-father was abusive. His father’s mother had trauma. The son has stated, “How could that not affect him, and, therefore, affect me? How could my mother’s trauma not, therefore, affect me? It has, even in ways that I’m sure they’re not even conscious of.”
There is no credible scientific evidence in humans that these stories could be true, and the mechanism of the mysterious transmission through generations is completely unknown (see here).

Trauma Dispatch has been documenting how the worldview of this subset is leveraged by activists in academia, media, and politics for policy changes in schools, governments, and social agencies. Popular culture of celebrity lives is another powerful medium for this worldview.

Source: FEMA press release
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
On February 6, 2025, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) issued a press release “offering free and confidential crisis counseling and mental health support” for residents impacted by Tropical Storm Helene.
 
Who Is Doing This?
FEMA routinely offers states the opportunity to apply for federal funding to disseminate their Crisis Counseling Program (CCP) following disasters.
 
The Premise
The federal government spends tens of millions of dollars annually on the CCP. In 2024, for example, those funds went to six states following Hurricane Helene. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, CCP awards to all states totaled $131.6 million. Following the World Trade Center Disaster in 2001, New York’s CCP allocation was $137 million.
 
The program began in 1974, when the U.S. Congress passed the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act which formalized a range of assistance programs (e.g., housing assistance, debris removal, and water pumping). 
For mental health, “The President is authorized to provide professional counseling services, including financial assistance to State or local agencies or private mental health organizations to provide such services or training of disaster workers, to victims of major disasters in order to relieve mental health problems caused or aggravated by such major disaster or its aftermath.”
FEMA delegated this to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). There are at least five major problems with the CCP program.
 
Analysis
1. The program is not intended for those who need clinical-level treatment. Even though the Stafford act allows licensed clinicians to treat psychiatric disorders, SAMHSA opted to invent a unique model of outreach, unsupported by any evidence, that prohibits such treatment [1]. The aim, strangely, was “to serve people responding normally to an abnormal experience” with the logic that this would somehow reduce stigma associated with mental health treatment. Accordingly, the program must hire non-licensed laypersons to comfort individuals in distress as a friend or neighbor might. 

​Survivors, however, are likely dumbfounded by this, being much more interested in basic needs of repairing homes, dealing with financial losses, and childcare.
3. It’s unclear why “people responding normally” need assistance. The program guidelines are clear that “the thrust of the Crisis Counseling Program since its inception has been to serve people responding normally to an abnormal experience.”  This, by definition, excludes those with PTSD, depression, and anxiety. If individuals are responding normally, why do they need crisis counseling?
4. It is impossible to evaluate the program. All contacts between crisis counselors and individuals are required to be anonymous in the effort to be sensitive to stigma. No screening instrument is used to assess systematically for distress.
The wisdom of this strategy has been challenged by Congress. In 1995 the FEMA Inspector General recommended that a program evaluation be conducted. In 2002, the Government Accountability Office recommended that again. In 2006, a special report from the Congressional Research Service lamented that “the actual effect of the program on health outcomes has not been demonstrated” because it has never been evaluated [2].
5. Evidence shows that disaster victims do not use crisis mental health programs. Even if SAMHSA had designed a robust program to provide real treatment in an accessible fashion, it wouldn’t matter. It has been documented in free treatment programs created following the 2001 World Trade Center disaster, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the 2010 Queensland floods, if you build it, they will not come [3]. The Queensland program was the most comprehensive post-disaster outreach program ever devised. They treated fewer than 100 children and adolescents.
 
Millions of taxpayer dollars are spent every year on a program that is insulated from being audited because of anonymous contacts and lack of data collection. The CCP program is so flawed and badly implemented, it seems like a parody that was never intended to help anyone truly in need.
I have sent this information to nearly every new FEMA and SAMHSA director since my personal experience in Hurricane Katrina. None of them have acted. It is time for the Department of Government Efficiency to use the chainsaw.


References
​[1] Robeznieks A (August 26, 2015). Fed dollars to address mental health issues post-Katrina may have been wasted: psychiatrist. Modern Healthcare.
[2] Sundararaman R, Lister S, Williams E. (2006) Gulf Coast hurricanes: Addressing survivors' mental health and substance abuse treatment needs. Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress; November 29, 2006. RL33738.
[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.

Source: Journal of Neurogenetics
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
In September 2024, a review of epigenetic research related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was published. Past reviews focused primarily on DNA methylation. This review included factors that regulate methylation including histones, microRNA, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
 
Who Did This
The first author was Nathan Wellington, PhD, a postdoc fellow at University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. This is his first first-author publication. He has one secondary author publication. His career aim is to develop genetic biomarkers of PTSD to provide treatment targets.
 
Background
Epigenetics is the process by which gene expression is regulated. DNA contains the codes for genes, but for genes to be expressed, the DNA has to be transcribed to the gene protein product that does the actual work in the body.
Most studies have focused on methylation, which is either adding methyl groups or removing methyl groups on DNA. It is believed that adding methyl groups usually blocks gene expression.
Some SNPs can influence methylation. A gene can exist in many variants (SNPs) that differ by a single nucleotide in a key region that alters the function of the gene.
MicroRNA (miRNA) are small, single-stranded RNA that can bind to RNA and block gene expression.
Histones are protein structures that act as spools around which DNA winds itself. Histones protect DNA from damage and facilitate DNA being coded into gene products.
 
The Claim
One purpose of investigating epigenetics is to try to identify biomarkers, which can be used to either detect individuals who will be susceptible to develop PTSD if they experience trauma, or to accurately detect individuals who have PTSD.
Methylation
Seventy-three studies investigated DNA methylation, identifying 488 unique DNA sites that were hypomethylated, and 1,940 sites that were hypermethylated in individuals with PTSD. Replications between studies were rare; among hypomethylated sites, only five were found more than once (i.e., replicated); among hypermethylated sites, only 20 were found more than once. No site was found in more than three of the 73 studies.
SNPs
Nineteen studies investigated SNPs, identifying 88 SNPs related to PTSD. Only one SNP finding was replicated, being found in three studies.
miRNA
Sixteen studies investigated miRNAs, identifying 194 downregulated and 24 upregulated miRNAs that were replicated in at least two studies.  Three studies dominated, accounting for 87% of these replications. The other thirteen studies accounted for 13% of the replications.
Histones
Nine studies examined alterations on histones. No sites have been replicated.

Analysis

Third, the findings do not show a reasonable promise of being replicable, as this literature review demonstrated. While the authors of the review appeared to believe that 20 hypermethylated sites replicated in two of 73 studies was reason for hope, that is the same thing researchers on psychophysiology and brain imaging asserted for years before fading away.
 
No patient's treatment has ever been influenced by epigenetic data. Should these types of studies continue anyway? Perhaps in the hope that some new breakthrough will make sense of it all? With research funding limited, this is a question that the National Institute of Mental Health has been historically slow to grapple with partially because admitting defeat would diminish the enthusiasm for research funding.

Source: Trauma, Violence, & Abuse
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
Researchers conducted a literature review of 45 papers to examine how the concept of trauma-informed approaches (TIA) can apply to forced migrant families to improve services.
 
Who Did This?
Social worker Anita Burgund Isakov is an Associate Professor, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has three first-author, and four secondary-author publications in the PsychInfo database. Her focus has been on foster care and family support services. This is her first paper focused on trauma.
 
The Claim
The aim of the literature review was “to understand the concept of trauma-informed approaches for migrant and refugee families.” From reading these papers, the authors extracted the following five topics on how TIAs have been applied:
(1) Experiences of migration. In addition to true life-threat trauma experiences, migrants also can experience economic insecurity, discrimination, lack of privacy in asylum centers, and challenges of assimilating into a new country.
(2) Conceptualization of trauma. Services must endeavor to convey greater understanding, respect, foster trust, be culturally-responsive, acknowledge intergenerational impacts, and strive for equity. This is the only way to be “genuinely healing” and “address the multiple layers of disparities” faced by migrants.
(3) Theoretical frameworks of TIA. Several theoretical frameworks have variously involved cultural humility, intersectionality of racial-based discriminations, and resilience.
(4) Approaches to trauma work. The authors asserted that cultural adaptations ought to be incorporated into psychotherapy techniques, but no studies have tested that.
(5) Programs and interventions to support families. Several training exercises have been used to instill cultural sensitivity into service providers.
 
Analysis
The data in the papers they reviewed was uninformative. There are no randomized trials of TIA. Only nine of the 45 studies involved quantitative data.
 
A method of analysis was lacking. There was no attempt to question the appropriateness or effectiveness of TIA. The review could make no definitive recommendations because nothing had been precisely defined or tested.
 
The more concerning flaws of the review, however, lie in two more pernicious defects:
(1) The aim of the review was flawed by circular reasoning. The usual scientific process is to gather data on a concept to demonstrate its validity. This review did the reverse. The authors reviewed papers that unquestioningly asserted the concept of TIA, and then concluded, of course, that the concept of TIA was vital. Critical thinking was absent. The authors ignored any benefits migrants might perceive from locating to more secure and free countries. 
(2) Verbiage was impossibly vague. The writing was an excess of words of trivial or vague content, typical of nearly every TIA publication. Deciphering a TIA manuscript is like deciphering hieroglyphics of a lost civilization, except that TIA jargon has never been coherent.
For example, the Discussion section concluded, “The intersection of different forms of oppression and discrimination, such as racism and migration status, is recognized by other authors as an important aspect of TIA to forced migrants as it recognizes the unique experiences of each individual (Bastia, 2014; Lee & Choi, 2022).” This lit review, however, did not establish an impact of oppression or discrimination, much less a combined impact. Being recognized by other authors is not a form of evidence. Recognizing the unique experiences of individuals is both inherent in any reasonable encounter and sufficiently vague to mean little.
 
Why Is This Happening?
A criticism of TIA is that, more than a decade after being invented out of thin air, the concept is still vague [1]. It should be obvious by now that being vague is the point, so that it can be whatever activists want for any occasion.

TIA has never been an empirically-derived concept. It has always been a Leftist, neo-Marxist ideology that claims problems of human behavior are causal from severe oppression. TIA theory serves the crucial functions of asserting causation and maximal severity. For the ideology to change society as intended, the inequity outcomes must be greater so that the outrage must be greater, so that greater involvement of the State must be demanded. Victims don’t just need psychotherapy, they need all of society to accommodate them everywhere all the time, regardless of how it impinges on other rights and freedoms.
 
​
References
[1] Mark Smith, Sebastian Monteux, and Claire Cameron (2021). Trauma: An ideology in search of evidence and its implications for the social in social welfare. Scottish Affairs 30(4):472–492 DOI: 10.3366/scot.2021.0385.

Source: KHON 2 news
Read time: 1.5 minutes, plus 51-second video
 
This Happened
In October 2024, Honolulu city government unveiled a plan to address homelessness with neuroscience-backed architecture.
 
Who Did This?
The architect hired to create the housing units is Ma Ry Kim. She is the CEO of B+HARI (Brain Health Applied Research Institute), which she co-founded in 2020 with a neurologist to design groundbreaking spaces that merge “cutting-edge neuroscience” and architecture to support cognitive resilience and brain health.
The city of Honolulu is spending $700,000 to renovate a warehouse, creating fourteen individual units of housing. The program is being operated by The Institute for Human Services, Inc., a non-profit in Hawai′i focused exclusively on ending homelessness. The state of Hawai′i will fund the operating costs, expected to cost between $1.5 and $2 million a year.
 
The Premise
Hailed as a “revolutionary city-state program” by the media, placement of homeless individuals in unique individual housing units will rewire their brains to help them heal. According to KHON 2 reporting, “Architect Ma Ry Kim designed the space using neuroscience research on how the brain heals from the trauma of homelessness.” The 51-second video below, by KHON 2, shows Kim explaining how it works.

​Analysis
There is no prior experience with this housing program that could provide evidence that this will work. The neuroscience behind the program was neither explained nor referenced. It is unclear what homeless individuals need to heal from but it has something to do with “trauma recovery.” It is unclear how healing from trauma will end their homelessness. It is unclear how living in units with four zones on a spectrum of public versus private space will rewire their brains.
 
Why Is This Happening?
This program is typical of the utopian Leftist project of the past one hundred years in America which believes that an administrative state can and should rule by science to eliminate all human suffering. Usually, the State makes a perfunctory attempt to provide the science background for its grandiose projects, but in this case, the manipulation of human plasticity, evidence from neuroscience, and rewiring brains were simply asserted.
 
This program is activism based on the moral foundation of progressive liberals which places care for the disadvantaged over all other moral concerns (such as tradition, loyalty, patriotism, and liberty). They assert that human nature is almost completely molded by life experiences, such that individual differences in success or failure are caused by experiences, not unchanging personal traits caused by genetics. That is a false certainty that leads nowhere good, and is doomed to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on a plan that is guaranteed to fail.