Impact of Trauma on Learning

Impact of Stress/Trauma on Attention (Text from Slides)

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Trauma’s Effects

  • Trauma can alter everything about our lives, including the way we view ourselves and the world around us. Trauma also alters how we process information and behave and respond to our environment.
  • Responses to trauma can include difficulty beginning new tasks, blame, guilt, fear for safety, depression, inability to trust others, sleep disturbances, reduced self-esteem, inability to concentrate, and panic attacks.
  • Some people may not show any symptoms. Others may experience dramatic symptoms, such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
  • This behavioral response, which begins in the brain, may disrupt one’s ability to function in the classroom. Disruptions may appear in the form of learning disabilities, behavioral problems, or both.
  • Trauma should not be ignored, but should be dealt with through interventions designed not only to “cure” the problem behavior, but to address the underlying trauma issues as well.

Trauma’s Effects by Age

  • Preschool students may regress in recently acquired developmental milestones and may increase in behaviors such as bedwetting and thumb sucking, Preschoolers may become more clingy with their parents. These students may become more irritable, showing increased temper tantrums. A few students may show reverse behaviors, becoming withdrawn, subdued, and sometimes mute after a traumatic event. These students may have difficulties falling or staying asleep. Typically these students will process the event through post-traumatic play.
  • Elementary School aged students may reveal distress through somatic complaints such as stomachaches, headaches, and general pains. These students may show an increase irritability, aggression, and anger. Their behaviors are often inconsistent. These students may show a reduction in school performance and have impaired attention and concentration and increased absences. Later aged elementary students may talk excessively and persistently ask questions regarding the traumatic event.
  • Middle and High School aged students exposed to a traumatic event feel self-conscious about their emotional responses to the event. They often experience shame and guilt about the traumatic incident and may articulate fantasies about revenge or settling the score. A traumatic event for adolescents may foster a drastic change in the way these students view and think about the world. Some of these students may begin to engage in self-destructive or reckless behaviors. There may be a change in the nature of their relationships with family members, teachers, and classmates.

Trauma’s Effects

  • It must be remembered that the previous descriptions to trauma by age are general. How a specific child will react to a specific trauma is always unknown, and may take any form.
  • Students who show any change in behavior may be showing such a change as a result of a traumatic event.
  • Students exposed to violence have been shown to have lower GPAs, more negative remarks in their cumulative records, and more reported absences from school than typical peers. They may have increased difficulty concentrating and may engage in more reckless or aggressive behavior than the average student.

Trauma: Some Sources

  • The vast majority (88% and above, depending on age of the children) of parents admit to shouting/yelling/screaming towards children.
  • Yelling and verbal abuse is a stronger predictor of mental illness than sexual and physical abuse (Simeon, et. al., 2001).
  • Inner-city children experience the greatest exposure to violence.
  • A 1993 study of adolescent boys from inner-city Chicago showed that 68% had seen someone beaten and 22.5% had seen someone shot or killed.
  • Those exposed to community violence are more likely to become depressed or aggressive in the following year.
  • There are those, however, who do not believe that trauma causes learning problems.
  • For example, Dr. Harold Koplewicz, at the 1999 conference on Mental Health sponsored by President Clinton, stated that the emotional suffering of children has nothing to do with traumatic life experiences.
  • Others state that attention problems arise from nutritional origins, stating that there are no biological markers

The Biology Behind Trauma

  • For those who believe… a traumatic incident can cause the traumatized to become frozen in a constant state of arousal, sometimes surfacing as a constant fear for one’s safety.
  • In this state, stress triggers changes in the brain. For example, Bremmer et al. (1996) discovered that victims of abuse had lower memory volume in the hippocampus than non-abused comparison samples. This area of the brain functions in processing information.
  • When a threat is perceived, the body has at least 1,400 physiochemical reactions.
  • This includes the release of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine.
  • Additionally, blood is infused into the muscles and blood pressure and metabolism increase.
  • This is not a state in which the student is well suited to attend to the teacher’s lessons.
  • Perry (2000) found that while in a state of arousal, it is difficult to process information because the function of the neocortex is altered.
  • Imagine being told at the doctor’s office that you have cancer, or another life-threatening situation. Though the doctor may explain everything needed to be done to face the situation, most will get home and not remember what the doctor has said, realizing that so much should have been asked that wasn’t.
  • It is the same for children who are in an arousal state, whether due to a crisis at home, abuse, neglect, or a school tragedy.
  • Children in this state find it hard to process information, follow instructions, pay attention, retain short term memory, etc.
  • Children may also become agitated or withdrawn.
  • Over time, this can lead to a lower self esteem and helplessness, as the child is continuously in a state where he/she is unable to understand as he/she should.
  • Recent studies suggest that these early negative life traumas which cause the release of glucocorticoids, such as cortisol, that can damage the left Hippocampal area of the brain, permanently increasing memory deficit (for both short and long term memory).
  • These changes in the area of the Hippocampus can occur as early as infancy (See PPT for diagram of the hippocampus).
  • Trauma is first experienced as a sensory experience (imagine the initial threat you would feel if being mugged) and then, after, is experienced cognitively.
  • As long as students are held in the sensory stage, constantly in fear or in a constant state of trauma or being traumatized, they will have difficulty cognitively and will demonstrate problematic behavior and academic lackings.
  • This constant state of arousal due to trauma also causes a decrease in blood flow to the brain. (Note: Blood Flow = Happy Brain)
  • If these children are diagnosed as ADHD and given Ritalin, blood flow to the brain is again decreased... by 20-30%!
  • Caffeine, which shouldn’t be given to hyperactive or inattentive children in the first place, further decreases blood flow to the brain.

Trauma: Interventions

  • Because trauma causes people to change the way they view themselves and the world, the first area to stress in interventions is changing the thought processes of those who have been traumatized.
  • Of course, before this can occur, it must be made sure that the child is safe. The source of the trauma must be removed. Importantly, the child must sense that there is safety. The perception must change before the thoughts can be reorganized.
  • For example, the visual cues of police officers after an incident of school violence can bring a sense of safety.
  • It should also be noted that children will not always express that they are feeling traumatized.
  • Children are often unaware that they are upset about something that may have happened at home.
  • With some children, it will take careful questioning about what is happening in the child’s life in order to identify a source of trauma.
  • Interventions to trauma should be as unobtrusive as possible. To over-intervene may be to over expose the student to the facts of the trauma, causing some students’ perceptions to the trauma to worsen.

The National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children (TLC) approaches trauma intervention in four levels: Level one – crisis intervention, level two – debriefing, level three – social responsiveness, and level four – structured sensory intervention.
  • Level 1: Crisis Intervention.

    • The purpose of crisis intervention is to restore the sense of safety. In the realm of school-wide traumas, it is important to have a pre-designed set of protocols. Because trauma is a sensory experience, and because one’s natural ability to organize is diminished during a trauma, protocols will assure an orderly thinking process during the crisis intervention.
    • Information, given by one in authority, can bring a calming to those facing the trauma situation. Information of safety will often lower the arousal caused by the trauma.

  • Level 2: Debriefing.

    • Debriefing decreases the intensity of reactions and the duration of reactions to trauma.
    • The book Trauma Debriefing for Schools and Agencies (Steele, 1999) is widely regarded in terms of it’s ability to meet the needs of students of various ages and levels of exposure.
    • Like Crisis Intervention, Debriefing is generally reserved for those most exposed to trauma.
    • Exposure is relative. Often a sense of closeness to a victim will result in PTSD for the victim’s close peers.
    • In today’s society of constant communication, having a sense of connectedness or of being related to another is growing more common. With this, secondary traumatization is growing more common as well.

  • Level 3: Social Responsiveness and Empowerment

    • This often involves having the victims doing something to make themselves feel better. Examples include writing letters, helping others, in-school memorial services, etc. The book, Schools Response to Terrorism: A Handbook of Protocols, published by The National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children (Fall, 2002) provides a wide-range of empowerment resources and activities.

  • Level 4: Structured Sensory Intervention.

    • This level of intervention can be applied anywhere from weeks to months after the incident of trauma.
    • The National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children’s Structured Sensory Intervention for Traumatized Children, Adolescents, and Parents (SITCAP) is commonly used by schools to assist students of all ages and for all types of traumas.
    • Here, the intervention is designed to allow the student to think about traumatic incidents in a new light, giving them more control over how they think about the trauma. Move from victim thinking to survivor thinking.

Trauma: Interventions

  • Other interventions involve relaxation training.
  • Progressive relaxation training will decrease tension and in time, many of the behaviors associated with ADHD.
  • You are teaching the child to “turn off” the physiological response to stress.
  • Assuming the parents are not the cause of the trauma, parents are the single most important support for school age children following a disaster.
  • If the parent is unstable or traumatized, it will be difficult to assist the traumatized child. Children need caregivers who are emotionally stable.
  • For parents who have their own traumatic baggage, education can assist them in dealing with their personal issues, which will in turn enable them to be a better support for their children.

Filed under: EDC 571 Biological Bases of Behavior (I and II)
Copyright: March, 2005 - David Profitt