Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
Trauma DispatchTrauma news you can't get anywhere else. |
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Trauma DispatchTrauma news you can't get anywhere else. |
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CATEGORY: GOVERNMENT PROJECTS Mikey Latner, founder, Project:Camp 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 Like Trauma Dispatch? You can subscribe to our email notices of new posts on this page. Comments are closed.
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