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When Traumatic Stressors are Not Past, But Now: Psychosocial Treatment to Develop Resilience with Children and Youth Enduring Concurrent, Complex Trauma

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Abstract

While providing school-based treatment for 450 urban impoverished children and youth from 2006 to 2014, we found implementing specific elements of PTSD treatment models reduced engagement and aggravated clients’ symptoms. Clients’ traumas were neither past nor single-type, but were multiple (complex) and unavoidably occurring concurrently with treatment. We speculated that many trauma treatment elements needed revision to be effective. Using a participatory action research methodology, we developed a resilience-focused treatment model for concurrently-traumatized clients. Drawing from the strengths perspective, self-determination, and hope theories, key treatment elements revised here are triggers, re-enactment, avoidance, “silencing,” and dissociation. Treatment guidelines include creating a safe zone, entering clients’ worlds completely, frame flexibility, client self-determination of treatment agendas and duration, and pleasurable play.

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Acknowledgments

We are most grateful to our many funders, including the Gabe W. Miller Memorial Foundation, which partially supported the initial phase of the Empowering Counseling Program (K. Tyson McCrea, P.I.). In addition, we are most appreciative of the support of Jack C. Wall, Ph.D. (now Director of the Social Work Program at San Jose State University) and Professor Emerita Brenda Crawley, Ph.D. (School of Social Work, Loyola University Chicago), Elizabeth Coffman, Ph.D, Professor (School of Communications, Loyola University Chicago), for the multiple ways they supported our programs. We also deeply appreciate the schools that gave the program a home: Doolittle East, Donoghue Elementary School, Jackie Robinson Elementary School, and Reavis School. Most of all, we thank the Empowering Counseling Program youth, who gave us the privilege of their partnership, provided inspiration and a constant source of fulfillment. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Leroy Griffin, an all-too-brief member of SUHO, who was murdered on 12/21/2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work, 820 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60611, USA

    Katherine Tyson McCrea

  2. University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, USA

    Deanna Guthrie

  3. Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Jeffrey J. Bulanda

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  1. Katherine Tyson McCrea
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  2. Deanna Guthrie
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  3. Jeffrey J. Bulanda
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Correspondence to Katherine Tyson McCrea.

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McCrea, K.T., Guthrie, D. & Bulanda, J.J. When Traumatic Stressors are Not Past, But Now: Psychosocial Treatment to Develop Resilience with Children and Youth Enduring Concurrent, Complex Trauma. Journ Child Adol Trauma 9, 5–16 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-015-0060-1

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