The core concept that is relevant to Geraldine is the danger and safety are core concerns in the lives of traumatized children. Geraldine experienced various signs and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a skewed sense of safety. After her mother’s murder, Geraldine became triggered and frightened severely at night, became increasingly anxious, and was constantly triggered by the events from that night. Specific things would trigger Geraldine and she began to lash out in aggressive behavior at school and had difficulty focusing in class. As said in the core concept, Geraldine’s exposure to trauma made it more difficult for her to distinguish between safe and unsafe situations, and it lead to more risk-taking behavior. She would …show more content…
get into fights at her new school when she became angry, and this was not the behavior she engaged in at her previous school. Geraldine also appeared depressed, withdrawn, and felt a copious amount of guilt due to unrealistic thought patterns from the night of her mother’s murder. Geraldine experienced and suffered traumatic moments for many years of her life and became familiar with feeling unsafe. As a child, Geraldine should have felt safe in her home, but when her parents would argue, she immediately had physical reactions to the danger that was occurring. Her heart would race, she would become anxious, and restless. Considering the frequency, intensity, and duration of the violence in the household, Geraldine’s safety was inconsistent. Immediately after the murder, Geraldine and her sister were taken to a neighbor’s house. Afterwards she was picked up by her grandmother and now lives between her grandmother’s place and her godmother’s place. Geraldine was taken out of her household and away from the violence but still felt unsafe and uneasy. When she did not know where her father was, she constantly feared that he would show up. Previously where she felt the safest was at her school, but she was taken out of that school due to lack of transportation. It appeared that she had a healthy attachment with her mother and felt safe with her. Everything that was familiar and safe was taken away from her abruptly and she was feeling the loss of a multitude of things at once. The definition of a risk factor is something that eliminates or hinders the person’s ability to feel safe and effectively manage their life after a trauma has occurred.
Risk factors can hinder a person’s growth, confidence, and likeliness to become resilient. Several risk factors are present in Geraldine’s life such as: violence at school, repeated cycle of domestic violence in her family, and the instability and drastic changes that took place after her mother’s murder. The biggest correlation between the core concepts and Geraldine’s risk factors comes down to her safety and stability. There is already a decline in her behavior at school, her academic success, and her mental health. Lehmann (2000) concludes the article by emphasizing how children who witness violent assaults of their mothers continue to be a potential at-risk population due to exhibiting symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Due to the many years that Geraldine witnessed the domestic violence in her household serves as a major risk factor. As the core concept described, children’s traumatic experiences can undermine children’s sense of protection and safety and magnify their concerns about danger. Geraldine must have been in constant fear for her mothers, sister, and her own safety. Since Geraldine recently lost her mother, she is also grieving her presence, relationship with her, and a sense of safety that she had with her. Geraldine did not appear to be frightened by her mother and showed signs of …show more content…
feeling protective and extremely loving towards her. If I were working with Geraldine as her social worker, the most prominent issue that needs to be addressed is establishing safety which could help her overcome her risk factors and strengthen her protective factors.
Geraldine did mention that there were a lot of fights happening at her school and that the neighborhood she is living with her grandmother is very different from where she was living previously. As mentioned in the core concept, children who continue to live in dangerous community circumstances may have greater difficulty recovering from a traumatic experience. This is a critical point because if she witnesses violence in her neighborhood or in school, it could trigger her to re-live her trauma each time. Since changing schools, the new school that she attends is overcapacity and underserved which leaves her with minimal resources and little attention. Many schools that are in a lower socioeconomic area don’t have the capacity to hire all the staff and assistance they need to better serve their students. Schools are a mezzo-level system that are extremely important but can hinder a student’s success if there is not a sense of safety or support. It appears that the new school Geraldine is attending is proving to be more of a risk factor for her because the only attention that she is getting from them is negative due to her aggressive behavior at school. She does not feel it is a safe or supportive environment for
her. A protective factor is described as an attribute in an individual, family, or community that reduces or minimizes a negative impact and helps contribute to a person’s resiliency. Geraldine has several protective factors in her life, such as: support from her grandmother and godmother, relationship with her younger sister, her religious beliefs, and her previous academic success. Now that Geraldine is taken out of her previous violent environment and has a consistent routine, this can serve as a protective factor as well. Safety and routine are essential for children and once she has her daily routine, she may begin to feel safe again. The core concept mentions that placing children in a safe home may not alleviate their fears, but Geraldine will eventually work towards feeling safe again with the support from her family and from the help of a social worker. It is so critical that Geraldine begins to feel safe at school because her previous academic success shows that she thrived in school before her mother’s murder. When a child’s school environment is a safe place, it can be used as an outlet to help overcome traumatic experiences. The support of a teacher, social support, and the material that is taught in classes could help Geraldine overcome her PTSD symptoms and constant state of fear. Jaffee, Caspee, Moffitt, Polo-Tomais, and Taylor (2007) highlighted the importance of a child’s functioning after a traumatic experience during the middle childhood stage and their ability to do well in school, interact with peers, and regulate behavior. This correlates back to Geraldine’s safety in school and how critical it is for her to have an open space for her to thrive and feel supported. Another protective factor that can provide safety for Geraldine is her religion and attending a church in her community. Kim (2008) describes how individuals who have experienced secure attachments can establish the foundations where a relationship with God can be built and be supportive during stressful times. Geraldine has formed secure attachments with her mother, grandmother, and godmother which means that she could form a positive relationship with God. She did express anger towards God for her mother’s murder, but Geraldine is still young enough to improve her beliefs and find a safe, religious environment where she can flourish. Her time with her mother was limited, but their relationship serves as a protective factor as well. Geraldine loved her mother very much and knew that she was loved by her mother. Her mother overcame certain odds as well and was financially successful within her career. Her mother’s resiliency and the love that she had for her children can both be contributing factors to Geraldine’s resiliency. Geraldine is extremely resilient considering the years of trauma that she has gone through, and her resiliency is a huge strength of hers. Geraldine is a remarkable young girl and with the proper support, will continue to heal from the trauma she has endured.
In the essay "Overcoming Abuse - My Story", Shawna Platt talks about her childhood with her alcoholic parents and her struggles. She has experienced neglect, domestic, emotional and sexual abuse. She also talks about how she overcame all the abuse, the way the abuse effected her mental health, and how she broke the cycle with her children. While reading this essay, the one incident stood out the most was that her parents left Shawna alone with her newborn sister. At the time, Shawna was only ten years old.
Jasmine Beckford’s case is the oldest out of the three; in 1984 Jasmine died as a result of long-term abuse aged 4. In 1981 her and her younger sister suffered serious injuries and were paced with foster carers for six months. After this they were allowed back home with their mother on a trial basis as social services were meant to support them. During the last ten months of Jasmine’s life she was only seen once by social workers (Corby, 2006).
The girl had been bullied by classmates before and after she was raped by the group that was terrorizing her. The fear never stopped for Cassidy, even after her mother, Linda Trevan, moved them from their home and switched her to a different school.
Traumatic events occur in all shapes and sizes. Traumatic events can influence a person’s life either in a positive way or a negative way. People can either make the best of what happened to them, or fall into a dark spiral downward—leaving some anxious or depressed. In the case of the Jeannette Walls, she tells the story of her ever chaotic and traumatic life as a child and young adolescent. Throughout her life she was exposed to being on fire, sexual assault, domestic violence, and many more traumatizing incidents. While these events are highly stressful and can cause severe mental problems, within the exposed person, Jeannette had the resilience to overcome and grow from the experiences her past had left her with.
as Jennifer, a victim states, “I feel our childhood has been taken away from us and it has left a big hole in our lives.”
“We aren’t the weeds in the crack of life. We’re the strong, amazing flowers that found a way to grow in the challenging conditions.” (McElvaney, 1057) The book entitled “Spirit Unbroken: Abby’s Story,” offers a perspective on child abuse providing a positive outlook on a tragic situation. Even in the best of circumstances, however, victims of abuse can see the effects of the trauma for the rest of their life. For each individual person affected by this form of trauma, the reactions can vary. The same type of abuse in two different people can have very different outcomes – one could be that of coping, and the other a life of brokenness. Especially at impressionable ages, any form of abuse can be a hindrance in living a normal life. Children
The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual cases in which children dealt with physical and mental abuse from their families that caused them to end up within the system. Also, some of these children had issues in adapting to foster and adoptive families based on the issues they faced earlier in life. As we have learned earlier in the course, the violence that a child experiences early in life has an overall affect on the person they become as they grow into adulthood. When children deal with adverse childhood experiences, they are at a higher risk for abusing drugs and/or alcohol, increased likelihood of abusing their own child or spouse, higher rates of violent and nonviolent criminal behavior, along with several other issues throughout their lifespan.
When faced with a life altering situation although Molly’s characteristics and personality aid her in courageously defying them, the effects of facing this traumatic event will lead to long term psychological repercussions. When severe harm is inflicted on a person’s psyche, it is viewed as an emotional trauma (Levers, 2012). The emotional harm inflicted on Molly’s psyche originates from different dimensions; like her upbringing, her trauma is multidimensional too. As a child of the Indigenous community, whose ancestors and elders were killed violently in inter-group conflicts, and whose children were forcefully removed from families, Molly is would experience intergenerational trauma (Atkinson, 2002). Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down from one generation to another; as a close knitted community group, the grief experienced by family members of losing their loved ones, would have been transferred across generations (Atkinson,
Childhood trauma can be from anything that makes a child feel helpless and disrupts their sense of safety and security, including: infidelity, alcoholism or abandonment. Beatrice could not escape her neglected past and Biff could not escape his father 's dreams and expectations. Both were traumatized. When a child is attacked by the person she/he counts on for nurturance it internally damages them. Since both Beatrices’ and Biffs’ parents lacked a balance for mature behavior, their children lacked skills in the real world and social
There exists a vast amount of literature that suggests that there is a connection between intimate partner violence and maladaptive outcomes for children. Studies have shown that children who witness violence undermines the children’s sense of security. Intimate partner violence (IPV) proves to be distressing and deregulating for the children victims of intimate partner violence. Not only is witnessing violence distressing for children but is also been shown that it can interfere with the deal with stressors and learn age-appropriate skills. While there have been many studies to show the effects of IPV on the development of children, there have not been studies that show how IPV can affect children’s memory skills.
Childhood Trauma is defined as “The experience of an event by a child that is emotionally painful or distressful, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects.” (The National Institute of Mental Health). Childhood trauma is an epidemic that seems to be running its way throughout the world. Childhood trauma is a worldwide problem that can affect anyone and everyone. People tend to just try and help the problems that occur due to the childhood trauma, but not the problem itself. Many of these issues will also follow the child into their adult years and will cause negative effects. This paper will discuss the negative outcomes for a child who suffers from childhood trauma, and the negative outcomes that can follow them into adulthood.
Avery affected Jessica’s physical, social, environmental, and mental health. Jessica could be at home watching TV, when she would get an email or text. Those emails and texts would be filled with hateful words and comments. This would eventually affect Jessica’s mental health, in a way that she would be insecure about herself, thus resulting in bad behavior. In this case, she swallowed the pills, attempting suicide. Avery also attacked her physically. She would surround her in the bathroom stalls, with her friend group. She would push Jessica, trip her, and throw her books on the floor. She affected Jessica’s social health in a way that she would not want to go out or be seen, because people might insult her; so she was reserved. Jessica became desperate to find a way out and later committed something horrible. Jessica’s environment became like a safe haven hat protected her from the cruel, outside world. Jessica would rarely seem to do things she enjoyed because she had no positive outlook on life. She viewed her environment as something horrible, mainly because she wanted a way out. Her teachers even described her as more quiet, and this was all part of her newly affected environment, due to the
Social learning theory includes learning aggression by observing the behavior from a model (Bandura, 1977). Family violence has been a social problem for years that still continues to this day. Violence is defined multiple times throughout the years. Levesque (2001) defined violence with family as an "act of omission or commission resulting in physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect or other form of maltreatment that hamper individuals' healthy development" ( p. 17). The definition of trauma is an emotional pain that can be long-lasting (Abbassi & Aslinia, 2010). It has been shown that trauma, family violence, and children that pick up this kind of behavior are all related to each other (Abbassi & Aslinia, 2010). Children that observe violence are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, PTSD, and mood swings. They can become unstable when parents are not there or unreliable. They are also more likely to be violent to their home with their children.
When a child witnesses domestic abuse it can have many different effects on the child. From my research I found that one of the most common effects on the child were mental health problems. In one study, conducted in New Zealand, young people that reported high levels of exposure to inter-parental violence had elevated rates of mental health problems (Fergusson & Horwood, 1998, p.1). Some of the least severe mental health problems included anxiety, inability to focus, and nightmares (Brescoll & Graham-Bermann, 2000, p.2). But these problems, which appear to be less severe, can also be the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Brescoll & Graham-Bermann, 2000, p.2). In a study conducted in 2001 the results indicated that higher levels of symptoms indicative of post traumatic stress were associated with children who have witnessed domestic violence (Hill & Nabors & Reynolds & Wallace & Weist, 2001, p.1). ?Children who have witnessed domestic violence are more likely to develop symptoms associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; that is, high levels of an...
Lundy, M., & Grossman, S. F. (2005). The mental health and service needs of young children exposed to domestic violence: Supportive data. Families in Society, 86(1), 17-29. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/230168631?accountid=10825