One child at a time: We must deal with trauma, not just behavior
A 13-year-old boy is found intoxicated, lying on the road, denying that he is suicidal but trying to goad the cops into shooting him. He is briefly held in a psychiatric hospital, then transferred to juvenile hall, where I first met him. I am his attorney.
His mother was given a phone number to call to arrange further health services, but never made that call because she knew he would just be put on a waiting list and she had no way to get him to a therapist anyway. She struggles with her own depression and alcohol abuse, was a victim of domestic violence, and simply can’t manage the fight. The boy, her son, identified by every elementary school as needing special education to address his anger and behavior problems, was the subject of numerous referrals to child protective services but to date has received no mental health treatment.
Those of us who represent children in the delinquency system meet children like him every day. We walk into their lives in a moment of crisis, read a report documenting a long history of referrals to child protective services that resulted in zero intervention and repeated instances of acting out at school that were met with consequences or behavior plans but no therapy. All I can see when I read those reports are the many missed opportunities to intervene. I wish I could say that by the time these young people get to the point of hospitalization or juvenile justice involvement, they finally had begun getting the help they need, but too often I’ve seen those encounters simply further traumatize them. Interventions tend to focus on behavior and how to change it, but fail to recognize or treat the underlying pain and suffering.
How can children who have been exposed to such trauma, suffering and stress not have received the critical psychological services to help them cope, especially when they were identified by schools and social services at such a young age? Why did they receive interventions aimed at their behaviors but not at their trauma? How did caring, compassionate and well-meaning teachers, social workers and pediatricians not ensure that these children receive the treatment and intervention they’d demand for their own kids? Why is the suffering, anguish and trauma of students seen as separate from their education, physical health and basic safety in the home? The answer is unclear, but the path forward couldn’t be clearer.
Science and experience have underscored the corrosive impact of trauma on learning and development, and linked early trauma to negative lifelong consequences. And we’ve got programs that work — school-based health clinics that connect youth to services at the first sign of trouble; social, emotional and behavioral supports built right into the classroom — to name just a couple. But too often they only serve a fraction of the kids in need.
It feels like, for all we know, these issues are only of interest to those of us whose job it is to try to solve them, one child a time. But I believe if more people listen, learn and stand up for these children at an earlier age, we’d spend less time dealing with the lifelong, societal consequences of missed opportunities.