Tag: trauma

Abnormal Psychology, Popular Psychology

Childhood PTSD AND Trauma: Part 1

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments on Childhood PTSD AND Trauma: Part 1

BW portrait of sad crying little boy covers his face with handsImagine a four-year-old child found covered in blood, lying over her mother’s naked, dead body, whimpering incoherently. She’s witnessed her mother being raped and murdered, and her own throat had been cut, twice in an attempt to leave behind no witnesses. She’s alone with her mother for approximately eleven hours before she is discovered.

After being hospitalized she is released as a ward of the state and put into foster care with no follow up treatment for the trauma she experienced.

How will she go on through life with those images etched in her mind? How will she survive psychologically? How will her mind protect her from such traumatic experiences?

This story is unfortunately a very true story, one of several stories of childhood trauma that can be found in the book, The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavaitz.

Tragedies like this occur across our nation and the world everyday, leaving behind sometimes physical, but always emotional and psychological scars.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that 30 or so years ago was reserved only for soldiers who had experienced traumatic events at war. It was later recognized that rape survivors, people who had been through terrible accidents or natural disaster, also exhibited symptoms of PTSD including flashback, hyper-vigilance and avoidance behaviors.

When it came to children however, the mental health and medical fields were slow to realize the impact of trauma on their lives.

Children were thought to be naturally resilient and would “bounce back” without the aid of any type of support or treatment. Those same children who had experienced trauma would often later develop psychiatric problems, depression and attention issues that would sometimes led to medication.

We know  now that children who have live through tragedies, are just as affected as adults, perhaps even more so. This is evident in the great way the mental health community around the nation responded to the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

What Causes PTSD?

PTSD can occur in anyone who has lived through an event in which they could have been killed or severely hurt or where they witnessed someone else getting killed or severely hurt. These can include violent crimes, physical or sexual abuse, someone close to them committing suicide, car crashes, shootings, war and natural disasters just to name a few.

Approximately 40% of children by the age of 18 will experience a traumatic event, which includes the loss of a parent or sibling and domestic violence. In the United States, child protective services receives an estimated 3 million reports of abuse and neglect yearly, involving approximately 5.5 million kids. About 30% of all those cases show proof of abuse:

  • 65% neglect
  • 18% physical abuse
  • 10% sexual abuse
  • 7% psychological (mental) abuse

This of course doesn’t include the estimate 66% of child abuse cases that are never reported.

The Likely Hood Of PTSD Developing

Girls are more likely than boys to develop PTSD symptoms. Approximately 3-15% of girls and 1-6% of boys who experience a trauma will develop PTSD. The chances of developing PTSD are higher depending on the type of trauma experienced. Some of the risk factors for PTSD include:

  • How severe the trauma was
  • How the parents react to the trauma
  • How close or far away that child is from the trauma

Of course children who go through the most severe traumas have the highest level and severity of PTSD symptoms. Incidents where people are hurting other people such as assault and rape, tend to result in PTSD more frequently. Children who have healthy support systems tend to have less severe symptoms.

The age of the child during the traumatic experience doesn’t seem to effect rather PTSD symptoms will develop, however PTSD looks different in children of different ages.

What Does PTSD Look Like In Children Ages 5-12?

  • children may not have flashbacks or problems remembering parts of the trauma like adults with PTSD often do.
  • Children might, however put the events of the trauma in the wrong order.
  • They might also think there were signs that the trauma was going to happen and thus they think that they will see these signs again before another trauma happens.
  • They think that if they pay attention, they can avoid future traumas which can lead to hyper-vigilance.

Children around this age may also show signs of PTSD during their play. They may keep reenacting part of the trauma. For instance, a child who has seen a shooting may want to play video games involving shootings or carry a gun to school.

Teens (ages 12-18)

In teens, some of the PTSD symptoms may be similar to those of adults including flashbacks, reoccurring nightmares about the event, hyper-vigilance and exaggerated startle responses. Teens are more likely than children or adults to show aggressive and impulsive behavior.

What are the other effects of trauma on children?

Other effects of trauma on children from PTSD comes from research done with children who have been through sexual abuse. They include:

  • fear
  • worry
  • sadness
  • anger
  • feeling alone and apart from others
  • feeling as if people are looking down on them
  • low self-worth
  • not being able to trust others
  • undesired behaviors such as aggression, out-of-place sexual behavior, self-harm, and abuse of drugs or alcohol

For many children, PTSD symptoms go away on their own after a few months. Yet some children show symptoms for years and possibly a lifetime  if they do not get treatment.

How Is PTSD Treated In Children?

For some children, the symptoms of PTSD will go away on their own with healthy supports and when they aren’t being re-traumatized by anxious parents or the media. For others, they may need professional help including:

  • Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy such as Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
  • Psychological first aid/crisis management
  • Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
  • Play therapy
  • Special treatments may be necessary for children who show out-of-place sexual behaviors, extreme behavior problems, or problems with drugs or alcohol.

What Can You Do To Help?

Educated yourself on PTSD and pay attention to your child for signs such as anger, avoidance of certain places and people, problems with friends, academic changes and sleep problems. If you need professional help, find a therapist in your area that treats PTSD and that your child feels comfortable with.  Where to Get Help .

 

Sources: The National Center for PTSD

Popular Psychology

The Preschool Oral Sex Scandal

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC6 Comments on The Preschool Oral Sex Scandal

20130210-172259.jpg
Some things we just shouldn’t have to talk about, and this is definitely one of those things. Apparently during last June and last September, a five year old preschool girl initiated sexual contact with approximately six other preschool boys at the First Lutheran Church of Carson School, in California. And by sexual contact I am talking about oral sex.

These disturbing sexual behaviors apparently went unnoticed until last October when another preschool girl was caught with her mouth on the genitals of a four year old boy at the school. That incident was then dealt with internally.

The school is now closing after these disturbing allegations and legal complaints have been filed on the behalf of the six parents of the children for negligence and “intentional infliction of emotional stress.” California’s social-services department cited the school for supervision “deficiencies” during their evaluation of the school last Thursday.

The community of course is outraged and want answers, from where were the teachers during these times, to how did this five year old girl who initiated the “oral sex scandal” become so sexualized.

While I understand these parents outrage and the need to blame someone, I also know that it is important that they handle this in a way that doesn’t dramatize the event and traumatize their children.

Chances are, if they don’t make it a huge deal, these children are likely to move on from this situation as normal, well-adjusted kids, but if the parents make this a traumatic event, these kids are likely to develop psychological and sexual issues that may follow them throughout their life.

As far as the little girl who initiated the behavior goes, the county of Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services interviewed her family and the family of each child involved and found no evidence of abuse. This in my opinion doesn’t mean that somehow, this young girl wasn’t exposed to adult sexual activity somehow, someway, even if unintentional.

Any parent or person who spends time with preschool kids can tell you that sometimes they do things such as play with their genitals, exposed themselves, dry hump the arm chair of a sofa, a favorite teddy bear or even masturbate.

These are all natural and innocent behaviors that aren’t sexualized at all, until we as adults make it so. Children can’t comprehend what they are doing at this age, all they know is that they are playing with parts of themselves they were told to keep private.

These type of behavior can be discouraged by simply letting the child know that this isn’t something you do in public. If you traumatize the event or make the kid feel bad about it, they can develop a complex about themselves and sex that they take into adulthood.

However, mouth to genital contact certainly is not a natural act for any child, which to me says she was exposed to this adult behavior somewhere, somehow.

Perhaps someone in her house keeps adult magazines or movies around, thinking, she’s only five, she has no idea what this is. Perhaps she’s seen adults engaged in this behavior or worst case scenario, maybe she has been sexually molested by an adult or older child and she is just modeling this behavior.

In the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, child psychologist Bruce Perry talks about a seven year old patient named “Tina” who, during their first session, attempted to touch his penis. This girl had been sexually abused for two years, from the ages of four to six by a sixteen-year-old boy, her babysitter’s son. Despite the improvements she made in therapy, at the age of ten she was caught performing fellatio on an older boy at school.

The girl in the book had been traumatized and was responding to her trauma in the way she had been traumatized, which is very possibly the same thing the five year old preschooler is doing.

While I think all the children involved will benefit better if the situation is not over dramatized and if distressful signs, behaviors and situations are addressed appropriately if they come up. I do think this young girl needs some professional help to figure out the source of her sexualized behavior or she is likely to grow up into another “Tina” who doesn’t learn how to control her impulses and deal with her trauma (if there is any) in a healthy way.

I think the take away from all of this is that we need to protect our children. As they say, “hurt people, hurt people”, the same goes for traumatized adults and children. If they are not helped, they go on to traumatize other adults and children.