Study Finds Foster Kids Suffer PTSD (www.thecrimson.com) & Commentary

Christine Cissy White 8/3/167:49 AM

Former foster children are almost twice as likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as U.S. war veterans, according to a study released Wednesday by the Harvard Medical School (HMS), the University of Michigan and Casey Family Programs.

This important article by Candice N. Plotkin helps challenge the cultural image that those with PTSD are mainly men traumatized by combat. It was shared on Facebook today.

What surprised me though - beyond the headline - is that the article was written 11 years ago!

It's been more than a decade since it was been published but I think many might still be surprised that children get such high rates of PTSD, in and outside of foster care.

I did a Google search for PTSD this morning and it shows no children at all (or women).

Unless you search specifically for women or children and PTSD you won't see any images of either.

At all. It continues to surprise me. Anyhow, here are a few more excerpts from that original article and some links to more recent information as well:

According to the study, 65 percent of children in foster care experience seven or more school changes from elementary to high school. Following the age of 18, the foster care system no longer has an obligation to provide foster children with family placements.

And

The study suggests that states should not only help kids within the foster care network, but also provide assistance to its alumni. Beyond lengthening placements and providing more social service workers to foster children, the provision of social and financial support for alumni may counteract future mental health risks.Full article.

More recent and general information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published this year:

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Christine Cissy WhiteIt's not trauma-informed unless it's informed by trauma survivors.

Robert:

Olcott posted:

You are a walking library with resources, references, stories and experiences. That image of the kid being accompanied so he wouldn't cry makes me want to cry.

I still love Judith Herman's book for all she has done to help people understand trauma (and heal). I love ACEs because it seems to offer the possibility of less splintering or "pissing contests" between different groups. Instead of only defining ourselves or one another by the types of adversity we lived through or the symptoms we struggle with or face, (people in recovery from x, y or z, those with a diagnosis of x, y or z, survivors of x, y or z) - ACEs offers us all the chance to be allies and work together more under a wider umbrella.

We don't have to minimize some experiences or focus exclusively on just certain parts - in ourselves and others - and I appreciate that so much.

Thanks for all of your wealth of information and insight comments.

Cissy

8/3/168:25 PM

Christine Cissy WhiteIt's not trauma-informed unless it's informed by trauma survivors.

Dear Wayne:

The "chronic emotional neglect, and sub-optimal attachment issues" are rarely absent when abuse is present. Many of these things come in a cluster that kids certainly can't parse out and I'm sure clinicians and others can't always hone in on one aspect of trauma either. I wonder if this is changing for kids in foster care.

That's part of why I love ACEs so much - because all types of adversity are acknowledged/addressed.

I know as an adoptive mother, I learned SO MUCH about attachment from other adoptive parents. It was important in my parenting but also in my own personal healing. Yet, though I'd known lots about trauma before being a mother, it was in the older "feel it to heal it" and "talk-talk-talk" days when abuse that was the focus, and neglect wasn't considered traumatic. It seemed that was the focus, abuse, but it's hard to address any abuse without having some solid attachments and that's missing for a lot of kids in (and out) of foster care. Cissy

8/3/168:15 PM

Christine Cissy WhiteIt's not trauma-informed unless it's informed by trauma survivors.

Robert:
Thanks for pointing that out. I corrected the link and here it is as well.

http://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/ptsd.html

cissy

8/3/167:54 PM

Wayne MunchelMember

Cissy - thanks for this post. As van der Kolk has suggested, the narrow diagnosis of PTSD misses the bigger picture of complex (developmental trauma). For instance, chronic emotional neglect, and sub-optimal attachment issues don't tend to get remembered/reported for obvious reasons. It seems to me the vast majority all foster youth are deeply traumatized, but it is often overlooked due to DSM limitations.

8/3/167:32 PM

Robert OlcottMember

Sixteen years ago, I attended a "Grand Rounds" continuing medical education presentation at [then Dartmouth, now] Geisel Medical School, by an Epidemiologist who noted 52% of Detroit Metropolitan Area Schoolchildren met the [then] DSM-IV criteria for PTSD. (similar numbers have recently been reported in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Atlanta-if my recollection is correct).

I had seen and learned of substantial similarities, when I'd visited the southeast Bronx 25 years before that: An eight year old boy with a gunshot wound to his thigh, accompanied by two older fellow gang members into the operating room--to make sure he didn't cry when the bullet was removed, was just one event. That hospital was recording about 186,000 emergency room visits annually at that time.

That was before I'd read Judith Lewis Herman's book: "Trauma and Recovery" which noted trauma in the "private sphere" (Domestic Violence/Sexual assault, etc.), and trauma in the "public sphere" (Combat/ /warfare). Jonathan Shay, in his book: "Achilles in VietNam: ...undoing human character", noted the "pluralistic ignorance" of even veterans who engaged in "pissing contests"--by not validating other veterans' traumas.

We discussed this phenomena in an undergrad class when I was in college in 1980, but under the heading of "pluralistic ignorance".

8/3/164:15 PM

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