Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
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CATEGORY: GOVERNMENT PROJECTS  Nancy Osborn, MEd, PhD, KC Healthy Kids 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:
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). Like Trauma Dispatch? You can subscribe to our email notices of new posts on this page. Comments are closed.
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