School May Be The Best Place To Address PTSD In Young People, But Resources Are Spread Thin [HuffingtonPost.com]

Samantha Sangenito 6/2/154:00 AM

For far too many students attending urban schools in the U.S., learning takes a back seat to what’s going on outside the classroom -- namely, violence at home and in the community -- and few schools are equipped to help students cope.

That could start to change in the near future. A federal class-action lawsuit filed last week alleges that California's Compton Unified School District has failed to properly address its students' experiences of trauma. School districts, the lawsuit argues, are obligated under federal disability law to offer support for students who have experienced trauma. If the court sides with the plaintiffs in the case, Compton schools would be required to hire counselors and train employees to better understand students who have been exposed to traumatic life events.

[For more of this story, written by Joseph Erbentraut, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...hools_n_7337158.html]

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Robert OlcottMember

After learning of an 8 year old Savage Skulls gang member going into the ER at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, in 1973, with a gunshot wound to his thigh, accompanied by older gang members-to make sure he didn't cry when the bullet was removed; attending a "Grand Rounds" continuing education presentation at Dartmouth in 2000, where an Epidemiologist noted 52% of Detroit Metropolitan Area Schoolchildren met the criteria for PTSD; and more recently in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, similar findings exist. I am glad this lawsuit was filed. Perhaps more litigation will be necessary, to achieve the results to end the trans-generational nature of trauma, even if it requires a similar legal strategy that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund used to set things in place for Brown vs. the Board of Education. Our nation's children deserve better.

6/2/156:04 PM

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