HELP FROM ABROAD:

Trauma specialists from Israel come to school to help teach resilience in face of terror.

Clergy members, therapists, first responders and teachers working at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School are gaining insight from two psychologists who are deeply familiar with terror and trauma.

And there will be a session open to the public from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. today at Heron Bay Community Center in Parkland.

The psychologists are from Israel, where citizens have experienced decades of war and face constant threats of physical injuries and emotional scars. The Israeli people have developed another side of this reality: resilience, strength and preparedness, qualities the Israel Trauma Coalition representatives are teaching in Parkland.

Alan Cohen and Yotam Dagan have seen about 450 people at their Parkland seminars since they arrived on Sunday, said Lisa Rahman, chief executive officer of Goodman Jewish Family Services of Broward County, one of their sponsors.

“They are talking about what to expect in the coming months,” said Rahman, especially the importance of early intervention and the signs of anxiety and depression. “Years from now, we could be seeing PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). We are getting a different level of training because of what we went through in

Parkland. Everyone’s taking notes because we have never been involved in a tragedy like this.”

Israel’s trauma specialists have fanned out across Israel and throughout the world when crises have hit, including the Japan tsunami in 2011 and the ongoing flow of refugees from Syria into Jordan.

Jodi Samson, a Broward County school social worker, said school district mentalhealth teams are mostly trained to help individuals with crises, and have little experience with a mass tragedy such as the school shootings.

The Israeli psychologists “are validating things we already knew about what a ‘normal’ response is,” Samson said. “We talked a lot about how to work in groups and deal with parents. We are working with everyone on their own coping mechanisms.”