Domestic Violence Project 6
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a broad category that can apply to people who have been severely traumatized at one or more times in their lives.
[06] Research Project 2
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Instructions
Research Project 2
Your project must be submitted as a Word document (.docx, .doc)*. Your project will be individually graded by your instructor and therefore may take up to five to seven days to grade.
Be sure that each of your files contains the following information:
Your name
Your student ID number
The exam name
Your email address
Be sure to keep a backup copy of any files you submit to the school!
Introduction
You’ll apply the concepts you’ve learned in this course to set up a program to help survivors of a school shooting.
Instructions
Scenario
It’s been several days after the shooting at the local middle school, and details about the shooter have emerged.
The shooter—13-year-old John—had been bullied most of his life. His mother left when he was three, and his alcoholic father physically and emotionally abused him. John often went without food and clean clothes for days, and other children mocked and humiliated him. Desperate to escape the misery, John took his father’s rifle and killed his father, whom he considered to be the source of his anguish. Then, John headed to middle school, seeking additional payback. John killed 14 students and three teachers, wounded five other people, and ultimately ended his own life.
Surviving students and teachers feel pain, anger, confusion, and guilt in the shooting’s aftermath. They need your help to create a program that will help them effectively process the situation and deal with their emotions.
Research
Your main research source will be your textbook when creating the program for the survivors. You should also use the references listed in this section or conduct your own research using reliable, relevant sources. Whether you agree or disagree with the authors, you must support your argument with reliable material from the provided sources. Also, if you have life experience in this area, you may include this information in your paper.
SOURCES
Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA. (2016). Responding to a crisis at a school [PDF file]. Retrieved from http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/crisis/crisis.p…
Department of Homeland Security. (n.d.). First responder. Retrieved from https://www.dhs.gov/cisa/first-responder
Office for Victims of Crime. (n.d.). Helping victims of mass violence and terrorism: planning, response, recovery, and resources. Retrieved from https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/mvt-toolkit/
Office for Victims of Crime. (n.d.). The vicarious trauma toolkit. Retrieved from https://vtt.ovc.ojp.gov/
Soma, C. (2017). 10 steps every educator needs to know to create a trauma-informed school. Retrieved from https://starr.org/10-steps-every-educator-needs-to…
Writing Guidelines
Keep the following guidelines in mind when writing your report:
Ensure your paper has the following components:
A title page
An introduction
A body containing several paragraphs
A conclusion
A reference page that lists all the sources you used to write your paper
Type your submission, double-spaced, in a standard print font, size 12.
Use a standard document format with one-inch margins. (Do not use any fancy or cursive fonts.)
Ensure your project is a minimum of 850 words in length.
Proofread your work carefully. Check for correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization.
Use APA style throughout your paper, including formatting and citations.
Review Purdue OWL’s information on APA style for guid
Trauma-Informed Care
As you may recall from Section 1.1, trauma-informed care involves the counselor taking the client’s history of experiencing trauma into consideration. It’s a strengths-based framework grounded in the understanding of how trauma impacts a person. It also emphasizes safety for both providers and survivors, resists re-traumatization, and empowers survivors to take control of their lives.
To practice trauma-informed care, crisis workers must consider all of the following when working with clients:
Safety, specifically ensuring the client’s physical and emotional safety
Trustworthiness, which is done by making tasks clear and consistent and maintaining appropriate boundaries
Choice, which involves maximizing the client’s experience of choice and control
Collaboration, or the sharing of power between the counselor and the client
Empowerment, which involves building skills
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Maze abstract of human mind representing complexity of PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a broad category that can apply to people who have been severely traumatized at one or more times in their lives. They might not be able to function effectively right now because they haven’t integrated the trauma and laid it to rest. Traumas that often lead to PTSD or acute stress disorder include witnessing violence or death, being a victim of abuse or a crime, and living through a natural disaster or one created by humans.
People experiencing PTSD learn to rely on defense mechanisms to avoid dealing with the trauma. The defense mechanisms can include repression (not allowing one’s self to feel uncomfortable feelings about the trauma) and disassociation (splitting off from the traumatic event and pushing the feelings into the subconscious). PTSD symptoms vary in each individual, and trauma survivors often suffer from feelings of paranoia, powerlessness, and hypervigilance, a state of constant preparedness and anxiety.
If people don’t deal with their traumas immediately after they experience them, they’re likely to live in a state of PTSD. They’ll exist in a chronic crisis state, and their functioning may diminish to the point where they can no longer deal with society. The PTSD symptoms will likely worsen over time and create new problems and crises. The only truly effective way to help these clients is if they first deal with their past traumas.
Natural Disasters
Natural disasters include tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other storm conditions that wreak havoc on humans. Certain factors determine how individuals cope with the disaster and its aftermath. Having material resources, such as transportation to evacuate and money to make repairs to damaged property, can help people more easily handle these crises. Not having access to these resources can be frightening and overwhelming and create trauma.
The perception of the precipitating event—the natural disaster—can also lead to emotional distress. For example, if help is delayed, survivors may believe that no one cares about them. Such a belief can cause significant turmoil.
Search and rescue forces search through a destroyed building after an earthquake with the help of rescue dogs.
When a disaster such as a severe storm hits, a community tends to go through four phases:
Heroic, during which emotions are strong, energy is high, and people tend to put their differences aside to help others
Honeymoon, during which there’s a strong bond with others who’ve survived the disaster
Disillusionment, when the previous sense of community vanishes and people become angry and upset and feel abandoned
Reconstruction, during which survivors assume the responsibility of rebuilding their homes, businesses, and lives
Crisis workers helping survivors of natural disasters can refer clients to community support groups and provide validation statements. It’s also important to remind these clients to limit exposure to news coverage of the event and focus on family reunification. These survivors must also be sure to take care of their basic needs, maintain a normal schedule, and practice self-care.
Timeline of phases of community trauma response graphed with high felt need at the top and low felt need at the bottom. Line starts in the middle at Pre-Disaster with warnings and threat, followed by Impact, plummets to Heroic and Honeymoon phases when inventory is taken. Trigger events cause a spike upward to the phase of Disillusionment through the end of the first year. Anniversary reactions may peak as line goes lower and stabilizes though reconstruction and working through grief despite minor setbacks.
Human-Made Disasters
Some disasters are accidentally or purposefully instigated by humans, including plane crashes, gun violence and shootings, and acts of terrorism. Terrorism is the illegal or threatened use of force or violence to instill fear in people to achieve a goal or fulfill a purpose.
While most people who are exposed to a terrifying event don’t have lasting problems, many have minor anxiety reactions, and some develop serious emotional distress. Clients suffering from trauma from a human-made disaster can benefit from educational, empowerment, and validation statements. Those who have developed PTSD often need professional help to channel their feelings into productive avenues for growth.
There are special programs and training called trauma response or disaster mental health. These programs focus on helping communities overcome the effects of critical incidents described in this section. It’s not considered treatment, but rather a crisis intervention method to stabilize survivors, increase their coping skills, and prevent long-term PTSD.
The critical incident debriefing process follows the ABC Model of Crisis Intervention. It also uses Caplan’s model on the traits of people coping effectively, which the first lesson covered. Support and reassurance about safety are key, as is allowing the survivor to grieve losses. Crisis workers should provide information about special help for victims. It’s also advised to encourage survivors to talk to and accept help from others and redefine priorities.
Other therapeutic approaches used to treat PTSD include
Educating PTSD survivors and their families about PTSD
Exposing the survivor to the event through images to examine and resolve feelings about the trauma
Teaching cognitive-behavioral techniques, such as breathing and relaxation exercises and communication and anger management skills
Using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), which is a combination of exposure therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy
Suggesting group therapy
Taking medication to relieve PTSD symptoms so the survivors can take part in their treatment
Secondary Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Doctors, counselors, police officers, and others who routinely work with individuals in crisis states may be prone to developing secondary PTSD. This type of PTSD involves depression and feelings of helplessness in the helper. Vicarious stress and trauma are natural consequences, and the level of distress experienced depends on the characteristics of the helper and the client population.ance.
Answer preview Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a broad category that can apply to people who have been severely traumatized at one or more times in their lives.
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