Impacted Whether They Know It or Not

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-5200-1.ch005 ◽

2022 ◽

pp. 71-88

Author(s):

J. Kevin Cameron

Keyword(s):

Recent Progress ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

Threat Assessment ◽

School Shootings ◽

Education Law ◽

Assessment Practice ◽

Targeted Violence ◽

Trauma Informed ◽

Prior Trauma ◽

Oriented Approach

In the past 20 years, schools have been increasingly exposed to school shootings in which many of the victims are targeted at random. Despite recent progress in coping with school crises such as suicide, accidental death, and targeted violence, the advent of random-type school shootings has left mental health, education, law enforcement, and other professionals struggling to deal with this type of traumatic event in terms of its aftermath and its prevention. In this chapter, a systems-oriented approach—rather than an individually-focused approach to traumatic events—the Traumatic Event Systems (TES) model, is proposed to increase the understanding and the effectiveness of professionals in responding to the aftermath of school shootings. The companion model, the Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA), is proposed with a trauma-informed threat assessment practice that creates a nexus between prior trauma and future violence potential through an understanding of the “trauma-violence continuum.”

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The Importance of Bystanders in Threat Assessment and Management

International Handbook of Threat Assessment ◽

10.1093/med-psych/9780190940164.003.0024 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 423-436

Author(s):

Randy Borum ◽

Mary Rowe

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Family Members ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Threat Assessment ◽

School Shootings ◽

Mass Shootings ◽

Individual Level ◽

Targeted Violence ◽

Intentional Acts ◽

Common Barriers

Bystanders—those who observe or come to know about potential wrongdoing—are often the best source of preattack intelligence, including indicators of intent and “warning” behaviors. They are the reason that some planned attacks are foiled before they occur. Numerous studies of targeted violence (e.g., mass shootings and school shootings) have demonstrated that peers and bystanders often have knowledge of an attacker’s intentions, concerning communication, and troubling behavior before the attack occurs. This chapter describes—with empirical support—why threat assessment professionals should consider bystanders; outlines a model for understanding bystander decision-making; reviews common barriers to bystander reporting; and suggests ways to mitigate those barriers, to engage bystanders at an individual level, and to improve reporting. The principal aim of threat assessment is to prevent (primarily) intentional acts of harm. When tragic incidents of planned violence occur, however, it is almost always uncovered “that someone knew something” about the attack before it happened. This happens because, as attack plans unfold, people in several different roles may know, or come to know, something about what is happening before harm occurs. The perpetrators know, and so might others, including targets, family members, friends, coworkers, or even casual observers.

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A Threat Assessment Model for Posts in The Online Sphere

Handbook of Research on School Violence in American K-12 Education - Advances in Early Childhood and K-12 Education ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-6246-7.ch015 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 318-331

Author(s):

Selina E. M. Kerr ◽

Mary Ann O'Grady

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Threat Assessment ◽

School Shootings ◽

Assessment Model ◽

Video Sharing ◽

Proposed Model ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Social ◽

Targeted Violence ◽

School Shooters

Since it has been suggested that social media offers an unprecedented view into the mindset of “persons of concern” with regards to mass shooters, this research study focuses on the comments about “school shootings” expressed on the social media and video sharing website YouTube. As a form of targeted violence that tends to be planned well in advance of the attack, there are opportunities to intervene and assess a school shooting threat before it transpires. Since previous studies have purported that the majority of school shooters had communicated their intention to carry out their attack in advance of it occurring—something which has become known by the term “leakage”—the authors have chosen to develop the foundation for a threat assessment model that is based upon the internet postings that relate to school shootings. The proposed model entitled “online threat assessment of school shooters” (OTASS) could be a tentative starting point for carrying out assessments of threats into online postings.

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Targeted Violence in Schools

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199352722.013.9 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Randy Borum

Keyword(s):

Best Practice ◽

Case Analysis ◽

Threat Assessment ◽

Incident Response ◽

Safe School ◽

Targeted Attacks ◽

Targeted Violence ◽

Assessment Approach ◽

Key Indicators ◽

The Continuum

Though targeted attacks at schools are rare events, educators and behavioral health professionals working in those settings must evaluate threats and threatening situations when they occur. Schools across the world have experimented with different methods over time, but the threat assessment approach—particularly executed by an interdisciplinary team—has emerged as abest practice. This chapter describes the results of the Safe School Initiative, an in-depth case analysis of 37 targeted school attacks involving 41 attackers over a 25-year period, and their implications for understanding the attackers, the situations, the settings, and the targets. It addresses the continuum of threats that schools may encounter and offers some heuristics for decision making, including recent research on key indicators of intent. It concludes by emphasizing the need for schools to have incident and post-incident response plans to mitigate harm if an attack does occur.

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The impact of a disaster on students and staff from a specialist, trauma-informed school in Australia

10.31234/osf.io/agdb5 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Emily Berger ◽

Matthew Carroll ◽

Darryl Maybery ◽

Dylan Harrison

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Stress ◽

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

Multiple Sources ◽

Learning And Teaching ◽

Opportunities For Learning ◽

Trauma Informed ◽

Staff Wellbeing ◽

The Impact ◽

Specialist School

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds often experience high levels of traumatic stress from multiple sources, however, little is known about their experiences and the responses of their teachers following disasters. The aim of this study was to examine, from the perspective of teachers, the impact of a critical community-wide traumatic event on student and staff wellbeing, student learning and teaching practices at a specialist school for disadvantaged and displaced youth in Australia. Eight school staff were interviewed, including administrative, teaching and support personnel, with their responses interpreted using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results focused largely on the impact of the event and the resultant relocation of the school, on staff and student health, reduced opportunities for learning, changes to teaching and student engagement, and the strengths and limitations of the trauma-informed approach of the school. Implications for teacher education and school trauma-informed models are discussed.

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Delivering Trauma-Informed Care in the Juvenile Justice Setting

Journal of Applied Juvenile Justice Services ◽

10.52935/21.1881545.09 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 139-152

Author(s):

Darson Rhodes ◽

Carol Cox ◽

Patrick Hebert ◽

Haley Bylina ◽

Parker Heman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Juvenile Justice ◽

Emotional Regulation ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

Care Plan ◽

Trauma Symptoms ◽

Post Traumatic Stress ◽

Stress Symptoms ◽

Trauma Informed Care ◽

Trauma Informed ◽

Training Community

Youth taken from the home and placed in emergency shelter, secure detention, and residential set-tings are exposed to new sources of trauma and danger that may re-activate severe stress symptoms leading to re-traumatization. A juvenile justice center planned a trauma-informed, system-focused in-tervention that included recommended elements: appropriate assessments of trauma symptoms, evi-dence-based programs and treatments to build resilience skills in youth and families, staff training, community collaboration and partnerships, and a safe environment to reduce the risk of re-traumatization. The purpose of this study was to describe the implementation over two years of the trauma-informed, system-focused intervention in the juvenile justice center and associated effects on youth trauma symptoms. Current and past traumatic event exposure, change in youth participants’ emotional regulation, effects of an evidence-based, trauma-informed therapeutic intervention on youth participants’ stress symptoms, and quality of the organizational trauma-informed care plan were assessed. Although efforts to improve participant emotional regulation and post-traumatic stress symptoms did not demonstrate significant differences, efforts to screen for trauma exposure at intake provided important information about participant multiple traumas to assist with the therapeutic pro-cess. Efforts in changing organizational culture and policy did result in minor self-reported facility envi-ronmental improvements. For the practitioner, even when an intervention is well planned, results are not always positive in actual practice.

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Trauma and psychiatry

Psychiatric Ethics ◽

10.1093/med/9780198839262.003.0024 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 581-598

Author(s):

Michael Robertson ◽

Garry Walter

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Stress ◽

Recent Progress ◽

Critical Factor ◽

Psychological Trauma ◽

Ethical Challenges ◽

Statistical Manual ◽

Diagnostic And Statistical Manual ◽

Trauma Informed Care ◽

Trauma Informed ◽

Psychiatric Discourse

Over the last decade, psychological trauma has re-emerged as a critical factor in psychiatric discourse. The ubiquity of traumatic stress, extending from the hidden ‘epidemic’ of violence within families to the vexed challenges posed by the chaotic geopolitical challenges since 9/11, has forced psychiatry to engage again with the area. This chapter examines the ethical challenges arising from the reformulation of posttraumatic stress disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, trauma-informed care in health systems, recent progress in the understanding of the psychobiology of traumatic stress, and how psychiatrists must position themselves in an increasingly illiberal society that often fails to protect the most vulnerable people.

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FC01-03 - High-K reproductive strategy as a negative predictor of PTSD

European Psychiatry ◽

10.1016/s0924-9338(11)73516-7 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 26 (S2) ◽

pp. 1812-1812

Author(s):

C. Giosan ◽

K. Wyka

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Reproductive Strategy ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

World Trade Center ◽

Psychiatric History ◽

Negative Effects ◽

High K ◽

Evolutionary View ◽

Prior Trauma ◽

Negative Predictor

This study examined the associations between a high-K fitness strategy (i.e., a Darwinian reproductive strategy where the individual invests significantly in a small number of offspring) and PTSD on a sample of 1400 disaster workers who had exposure to a singular traumatic event (the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City). The participants underwent psychological evaluations consisting of1) Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and2) PTSD Checklist (PCL). The participants were also administered the3) High-K Strategy Scale (HKSS) (Giosan, 2006).Other factors, such as demographics, prior trauma, prior psychiatric history, and the severity of exposure to 9/11 were also captured. The results showed that HKSS score was an important negative predictor of PTSD, accounting for 10% of the variance in the PCL and 5% of the variance in the CAPS, after controlling for demographics, prior trauma, prior psychiatric history and the severity of exposure to 9/11. The findings speak against the evolutionary view that PTSD symptoms are adaptive while strengthening the evolutionary view that PTSD is the expression of an overlearned survival response in vulnerable individuals (Silove, 1998), which, when activated, can have significant negative effects on fitness.

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Polyvictimization and Psychosocial Outcomes Among Trauma-Exposed, Clinic-Referred Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System

Child Maltreatment ◽

10.1177/10775595211025096 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 107755952110250

Author(s):

Heather T. Pane Seifert ◽

Angela M. Tunno ◽

Ernestine C. Briggs ◽

Sherika Hill ◽

Damion J. Grasso ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Juvenile Justice ◽

Behavioral Problems ◽

Latent Class ◽

Juvenile Justice System ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

Latino Youth ◽

Psychosocial Outcomes ◽

Emotional And Behavioral Problems ◽

Trauma Informed ◽

Cross System

Polyvictimization is a robust predictor of emotional and behavioral problems and is linked to involvement in juvenile justice and other public sector systems. This study extends prior research by employing person-centered methods for identifying polyvictimization patterns among trauma-exposed, clinic-referred, justice-involved youth ( n = 689; ages 12–18 years) and how identified classes differ on psychosocial outcomes and demographic characteristics. Most participants had experienced multiple traumatic event (TE) types. Latent class analyses identified three classes: mixed trauma/bereavement exposure group (55.1%; Mean = 3.0 TE types); maltreatment polyvictimized group (29.3%; Mean = 5.7 TE types); and maltreatment plus extreme violence polyvictimized group (15.7%; Mean = 9.3 TE types). Polyvictimized youth were more likely to be female, in out-of-home placements, and experiencing negative psychosocial outcomes (e.g., Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). Hispanic/Latino youth were overrepresented in the extreme polyvictimized subgroup. Results underscore the need for cross-system coordination of trauma-informed, comprehensive services for clinic-referred, justice-involved youth.

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