[Photo: David Joles/StarTribune.com]
Paige McConkey leans across the kitchen table in a gray bungalow, talking to 11-year-old Meadow Eberle about times she’s lashed out in unprovoked anger.
Her father was killed in a drunken driving crash 16 months ago. His best friend, almost an uncle to Meadow, was driving and now sits in jail.
“Are you ever angry for what seems to be no reason?” he asks. “You’re dealing with things that are tough to take. You have all these feelings and emotions and they’re going to come out and we want them to come out in a good way.”
McConkey is a mental health practitioner embedded in the St. Cloud police department’s new program aimed at intervening early to help kids grappling with trauma. He starts his new job, funded by private grants, against a backdrop of chronic shortages in mental health services across Minnesota.
“Decades of research show trauma and extreme stress take their toll on children,” said Dr. Abi Gewirtz, an associate professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota. Traumatic childhoods can affect everything from life expectancy to criminal history.
Between 75 and 93 percent of juvenile offenders have endured at least one traumatic event. And child victims of abuse and neglect are 59 percent more likely to be arrested as juveniles and 30 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.
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