Browsing by Subject "Trauma"

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American Indian Vietnam combat veterans: how out-of-home placement and having a veteran primary care giver are associated with features and symptoms of trauma.
(2008-12) Yaekel-Black Elk, Julie Kay
It was the purpose of this study to examine the relationships among American Indian Vietnam combat veterans' childhood experiences: extra-cultural placement and having a veteran primary care giver, and features and symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Participants were 150 American Indian Vietnam combat veterans from the Midwest. This study examined scores from two dependent measures: Traumatic Attachment Belief Scale (TABS) and the Mississippi Combat PTSD Scale-Short Form (M-PTSD Short Form). The two independent measures were: veterans who experienced extra-cultural placement or those who did not experience extra-cultural placement, and veterans who had a veteran primary care giver as a child or who did not have a veteran primary care giver as a child. Research findings indicated that veterans who experienced extra-cultural placement were significantly more likely to have experienced incarceration and homelessness. There were no significant differences in alcohol and drug treatment between those who had experienced extra-cultural placement and those who had not. There were no significant differences found if participants had a veteran primary care giver or not in homelessness or treatment for alcohol or drug abuse. Those who had a veteran primary care giver were found to be significantly more likely to experience incarceration than those who did not. Research findings also showed that participants who experienced actual or threatened homelessness were also more likely to experience incarceration and alcohol or drug treatment. The impact of trauma on beliefs about others' safety was significantly greater than the impact of trauma on beliefs about self-safety, trust of others or of self-esteem toward others or toward self, and of intimacy with self or others. Other differences in these constructs were found. Significant differences were not found in the impact of trauma on features and symptoms of PTSD as a function of the absence of extra-cultural placement or extra-cultural placement or having a non-veteran or veteran primary care giver. Finally, there were significant associations between the impact of trauma on beliefs about self and others, features and symptoms of PTSD, no extra-cultural placement/extra-cultural placement, and having a non veteran or veteran primary care giver.
Application of Systems Biology Analysis to Hepatic Injury Following Hemorrhagic Shock
(2014-05) Determan, Charles Edward Jr
Introduction: This dissertation is focused on the metabolomic and transcriptomic changes that occur as a result of carbohydrate prefeeding during hemorrhagic shock and trauma within the liver of a porcine model. The risk of trauma and hemorrhagic shock continues to be an important issue in both military and civilian sectors. As such, we explored the impact of a prior fed state upon the overall response to hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation. The primary hypotheses were that changes in metabolism at the metabolomic and transcriptomic levels would be dependent upon the fed state. In addition, this thesis explores a more comprehensive analysis of metabolomics datasets to standardize analysis and improve overall consistency.Materials and Methods: Algorithm comparison was accomplished using six commonly applied methods to three synthetic datasets, of different sample sizes, and three openly accessible published datasets. This comparison also incorporated metrics to measure consistency of identified features (i.e. stability) to provide further confidence in results. Metabolomics analysis was accomplished with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and Chenomx software to profile and quantify metabolites in liver extracts. The metabolome was subsequently analyzed with partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Transcriptomics analysis was conducted using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to employ RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) on mRNA extracts from liver biopsies. The RNA-seq data was analyzed using typical processing techniques to generate a count matrix and subsequently analyzed with the Bioconductor package EdgeR. Results: The comparison of algorithms showed that the best algorithm is associated with differently structured datasets (e.g. number of features, number of groups, sample size, etc.). Analysis of the liver metabolome revealed changes in carbon energy sources, amino acid metabolism, oxidative stress, and membrane maintenance. Transcriptomic analysis revealed changes in carbohydrate metabolism, cytokine inflammation, cholesterol synthesis and apoptosis. In addition, there is evidence of increased cytoskeleton reorganization which may correspond to a shrunken, catabolic state which provides and anti-inflammatory condition to mitigate cellular damage.Conclusion: The response to hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation is altered with respect to a fasted or carbohydrate prefed state. Metabolomics and transcriptomic analyses suggest altered metabolic pathways as a result of fed state. Altered carbohydrate metabolism was readily identified thereby confirming both methods were successful. Additionally, indications of membrane maintenance that follow cytoskeletal remodeling and cellular shrinkage are potentially reflected by 3-Hydroxyisovalerate and sn-Glycero-3-phosphocholine. These results provide further evidence for pre-conditioning (e.g. altered diet) and hypertonic resuscitation methods to possibly improve patient outcome. Further research is required in alternative prefeeding substrates (e.g. protein, lipid, etc.) as well as improving the integration of different systems level datasets to understand more thoroughly the systemic effects of hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation.
Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing a Parenting Intervention with Karen Refugees
(2017-05) Ballard, Jaime
Parents and children exposed to war and relocation have high rates of negative relational and mental health outcomes. This dissertation tested the feasibility of implementing an adapted evidence-based parenting intervention for contexts of traumatic and relocation stress. In the first phase of the feasibility study, I conducted three focus groups with Karen caregivers (N = 12, 5, and 12) to assess parenting practices in the Karen refugee community. Key themes identified related to mothers’ physical care for their children, parenting difficulties after relocation to the U.S., and practices of discipline, direction-giving, and encouragement. In the second phase, I adapted the evidence-based intervention and assessed its feasibility. Two groups comprised of eleven female Karen refugee caregivers participated in the intervention. Participants and a focal child completed structured assessments at baseline and follow-up as well as an ethnographic interview at follow-up. Caregivers reported changes in their teaching, directions, emotional regulation, discipline, and in child compliance. Children reported changes in teaching, directions, discipline, their own compliance, and in positive parent involvement. Caregivers reported higher mental health distress immediately after the intervention, potentially due to increased awareness. Children reported a decrease in mental health symptoms.
Canadian CT Head Rule is an Effective Clinical Screening Tool in Minor Head Trauma Cases.
(2010-11-02) Donald, Bryan
The Canadian CT Head Rule is a simple screening tool used in cases of adults with minor head trauma. It can identify patients needing surgery 100% of the time while limiting the number of patients needing head CT to only 32% of those with minor head trauma and a loss of consciousness.
Disabling Trauma: Toward A Crip Critique of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(2019-08) Carter, Angela
Utilizing both Critical Disability Studies and Critical Trauma Studies, this dissertation investigates the dominant discourses within contemporary U.S. trauma culture. There are four primary goals. First, by analyzing the popular discourses of trauma this project explores what trauma, as a concept, does in contemporary U.S. society – particularly the impact the discourses of trauma have on society’s most vulnerable. Second, in bringing together these two interdisciplinary fields of inquiry, this project argues that we are better able to attend to the social, discursive, material, and embodied realities of trauma which allows for the situating of trauma as a coalitional site for affinity groups and political connection. Third, this project works to imagine trauma otherwise, specifically to reimagine trauma theory in ways that disrupts the current circulation of power and oppression within its discourses, thus allowing for more transformational and restorative healing both collectively and personally. Four, and last, this project aims to create breathing room for more narratives of trauma, including: alternative narratives, fractured narratives, futuristic narratives, anti-narratives, and no narratives at all. The dissertation begins with an analysis of thirty-six years of TIME magazine - through both quantitative methods and close readings - in order to understand how the popular discourses of trauma/PTSD have shifted since the diagnosis was incorporated into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Chapter Two provides a Feminist Queer Crip analysis of Emma Gonzalez’s “March For Our Lives” speech from March 24, 2018, offering a reconceptualization and working definition of trauma as an embodied, affective structure that must be taken out of the medical model of disability. Chapter Three turns to recent debates about trauma and trigger warnings in the college classroom. When contextualized within the intersecting politics of disability and feminist pedagogies, this chapter argues that three fundamental misconceptions within this debate become apparent and the need for a Feminist Disability Studies Pedagogy arises. Chapter Four imagines trauma otherwise through a close reading of A little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, arguing that the book’s main character presents an alternative, crip, ways of knowing and being with trauma that deserves our critical consideration.
Exploring canine trauma and hemorrhage as a translational model: epidemiology, shock index and tissue oxygen levels
(2012-12) Wilke, Kelly
This body of work represents initial efforts to justify the use of naturally occurring trauma in dogs as a translational model for improving trauma patient care in dogs and humans, alike (Figure 1, below). The idea for developing canine trauma as a translational model is a direct result of opportunities realized during participation in the Masters of Clinical Research program. The concept of evaluating naturally occurring diseases in dogs to enhance human patient care has become more prevalent in recent years, particularly in the fields of oncology, epilepsy and gene therapy. A canine trauma model offers an opportunity to leverage information learned from experimental canine trauma models in concert with information from spontaneous ("natural") canine models that occur in the clinical setting. The first manuscript represents a review of the veterinary and human trauma literature, drawing similarities between injury patterns in both populations and proposing the utilization of naturally occurring trauma in dogs as a model for human trauma ("Naturally occurring canine trauma: A model for early and late causes of human trauma morbidity and mortality"). Drs. Claire Sharp and Cynthia Adams contributed to the literature review and summary of articles included in the paper; generation of the manuscript involved all listed authors under the guidance and mentorship of Dr. Greg Beilman. The second manuscript ("A multi-center eight-week prospective cohort study of 315 dogs sustaining trauma") represents the initial efforts of the multicenter, multidisciplinary Spontaneous Trauma in Animals Team (STAT). The manuscript will be submitted to the Journal of the Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA). This group first formally met in January 2011 and established a primary goal to successfully plan, obtain funding for, and perform a multi-center prospective cohort study in anticipation of performing multi-center prospective clinical trials. The STAT infrastructure is designed in anticipation of performing future intervention studies. Study execution, expertise and resources are provided by the site investigator working group [Drs. Hall (UMN), Holowaychuk (OVC), Sharp (Tufts) and Reineke (UPenn)], Data Monitoring Committee [UMN: Drs. Byrnes (MD trauma surgeon), Beilman (MD trauma surgeon), Spector (pediatric epidemiologist), Leduc (biostatistician); UPenn: Dr. Otto (veterinary criticalists, translational researcher)] and Clinical Investigation Center [UMN: Kathy Stuebner (research coordinator)], respectively. Given the successful collaborative efforts of this first research project, the group is working toward obtaining funding for pre-Phase I and Phase II trials utilizing this spontaneous model in order to efficiently evaluate therapeutic interventions (e.g., novel fluid therapies, early goal directed therapy, mesenchymal stem cell therapy) and/or non-invasive monitoring techniques to guide therapy and improve outcome (e.g., near-infrared spectroscopy, biomarkers). The group has recently expanded to add 2 additional research sites (The Ohio State University and Michigan State University) and is currently enrolling patients in a similarly designed study evaluating scoring systems and outcome in feline trauma. It is a privilege to function as the founder and lead facilitator of this collaborative working group. The third and fourth manuscripts evaluate the application of two triage tools adapted from human emergency and critical care medicine in canine patients. "Tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) in dogs presenting for acute hemorrhage" assesses the InSpectra^TM Tissue Spectrometera in a population of acutely hemorrhaging dogs and "Assessment of shock index in healthy dogs and dogs in hemorrhagic shock" evaluates the utility of shock index (heart rate/systolic blood pressure) in the same population. The first project was internally funded by College of Veterinary Medicine's Small Companion Animal Grant, and co-lead by Drs. Sarah Gray and Kelly Hall (grant writing, case and data tracking, manuscript preparation). Dr. Sarah Gray presented the data at the International Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society conference in 2011 as part of her Emergency/Critical Care residency requirements. Drs. Schildt and Powell participated in classification of patient's shock level and manuscript creation. Dr. Ann Brearley (Biostatistical Design and Analysis Center, UMN) performed the biostatistical analysis and contributed to manuscript creation. The manuscript will be submitted to the Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care. Dr. Katie Peterson presented the shock index data in abstract form at the International Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society conference in 2012 as part of her Emergency/Critical Care residency requirements and took the lead on data collection and manuscript generation. Dr. Brian Hardy performed the statistical analysis and participated in manuscript generation. The Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care has accepted this article with minor revisions.
Fred Wilson's 'Un-Natural' Histories: race, trauma, and the production of knowledge
(2013-10) Chisholm, Anna
This dissertation examines the relationship between historical trauma and race through the work of contemporary African American installation artist Fred Wilson.
Home birth in the United States and the Netherlands: understanding women's experiences of stigma, nature, and trauma
(2013-12) Kulick, Rachael Beth
This is an ethnographic study of contemporary home birth in the United States and the Netherlands. Data include (1) fieldnotes collected at prenatal appointments, births, postpartum visits, and professional meetings, (2) transcripts from pre- and post-birth interviews with pregnant women as well as interviews with midwives, and (3) textual materials including statements by medical and midwifery associations and books by leaders of the natural birth movement. Analysis reveals three key components of women's experience: stigma, natural birth, and trauma. Home birth in the U.S. is seen as risky behavior and women who plan such births are labeled risk mothers. Women cope with this stigma by employing isolation and secrecy, attempting an education campaign, or seeking comfort in a family tradition of alternative approaches to health. In the Netherlands, home birth is part of the mainstream health care system. In the absence of stigma, structures for collaboration between midwives and physicians facilitate relatively smooth interactions. An international discourse of natural birth informs a script for how to accomplish home birth in the U.S. This script emphasizes a warm, dark, and quiet environment, continuous labor support, and the achievement of an altered state of consciousness. A different script operates in the Netherlands - one that focuses on home birth as ordinary (as opposed to extraordinary) and is based on a tradition of independent midwifery, insurance industry support, and professional postpartum home care. Home-to-hospital transport is a traumatic experience in the U.S. - not so much because of the obstetric complications that necessitate the transfer as because of the disruption of beliefs and values that occurs when women move from the midwifery to the biomedical model of care. In the Netherlands, non-Dutch women with a medicalized view of birth experience a similar rupture between their worldview and a system that promotes unmedicated, low-intervention birth.
"In a shattered language": a feminist poetics of trauma.
(2011-10) Griffiths, Amy Kathleen
In a Shattered Language": A Feminist Poetics of Trauma, fuses theories of traumatic stress with studies of contemporary poetry and poetics. This project intervenes in debates over the ways trauma is experienced, remembered, and represented by positing poetry as an alternative form of discourse--one which endures the pressures of testimonial coherence while simultaneously preserving the aporias of knowledge and memory that characterize traumatization. My analysis also revises trauma theory from a feminist perspective by investigating domestic traumas such as rape, incest, and mental illness as portrayed in poetry by North American women writers in the twentieth century. The dissertation opens with a brief Prologue, which views the 2010 Korean film Poetry as a text through which the major concerns of this project are refracted. The first chapter, "Difficult Word: The Interpretation of `Trauma' and the Trauma of Interpretation," traces a genealogy of trauma as an intellectual concept prone to semantic slippage, and calls for a Poetics of Trauma to reconfigure the role of linguistic form in conceptualizing trauma and its aftermath. The second chapter, "`While Someone Else is Eating': The Dialectic of the Extreme and the Everyday in Frances Driscoll's. The Rape Poems," conducts close readings of poetry by a survivor of intruder rape, and argues that a feminist perspective qualifies the core tenet of trauma theory which locates traumata in extreme external events. The third chapter, "Traumatizing the Lyric `I': Poetic Subjectivity in Betsy Warland's. The Bat Had Blue Eyes," considers theories of the traumatized "self" as they pertain to an adult survivor of childhood incest, and argues that poetry-writing generates a phenomenological selfhood through which survival becomes perpetual revision. The final chapter, "Traumatic Consciousness: The Poetry of Interpretation in Hannah Weiner's Archive," encounters Weiner's work as a means of critiquing the psychopathology model of trauma. This chapter finds that Weiner's avant-garde poetics both does and does not evince symptoms of her struggle with schizophrenia, and as such, suggests how conventional language itself traumatizes consciousness. This chapter weaves together research in Weiner's unpublished journals with a personal narrative to form an implicit theory of the poetics of reading and writing trauma.
The influences of unresolved trauma and family experiences on hoarding behavior
(2013-05) Sampson, Jennifer M.
In a sample of 387 participants who self-reported being a person who hoards or a family member of a person who hoards, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the fit of a proposed model that examined the influences that unresolved trauma and loss, psychological distress, attachment security, and positive family dynamics had on hoarding behavior. The study found that higher levels of unresolved trauma and loss and psychological distress contribute to predicting hoarding severity, and positive family dynamics can serve as a protective factor in the relationship between these variables. Future research, treatment, and policy implications are discussed.
Inside the Head of a Bad" Kid: An Autoethnographyof Adversity to Resilience"
(2016-08) Laabs, Bonnie
Abstract This qualitative autoethnography explores how and why youth succeed and struggle in their personal and academic lives, through the lens of my own successes and struggles. Autoethnography as an analytical tool places value on the self-reflexive process of understanding. By working through my own childhood experiences and development as a person and a learner, I explore how my personal understanding of trauma impacts my methods for teaching the survival-based students who I now mentor as teacher. This study provides educators, therapists, and caregivers with a deeper understanding of trauma and resilience, from my personal experiences and professional analysis and application. Readers can implement insights from this study to guide young people towards an individual reflection of their experiences. This dissertation is a serious attempt to discover directions for success with trauma and behavior issues in schools. The different data sources and analysis techniques fit together to demonstrate how the experiences of childhood transition into the outcomes of adulthood. Most importantly, by shedding light on the intervention process, we can increase the odds for today’s struggling young people. This thesis travels chapter by chapter, alternating between memoir and analysis to ultimately conclude that lagging executive function skills can be strengthened through behavior intervention which will ultimately increase individual resilience.
ITS and Transportation Safety: EMS System Data Integration to Improve Traffic Crash Emergency Response and Treatment – Phases IV and V
(Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2012-09) Schooley, Benjamin; Horan, Thomas A.; Abed, Yousef; Murad, Abdullah
Researchers developed a software system called “CrashHelp” to improve the information exchange from emergency medical services (EMS) practitioners to emergency room/trauma center providers. The system combines mobile smartphone, multimedia, Web server, and location-based technologies for paramedics to send key information to hospital providers in a more data-rich manner than is currently available. This study outlines the development of a second version of CrashHelp and summarizes the results of an initial pilot testing in the Boise, Idaho, region. In addition, the study contains an analysis of the data system standards for EMS and intelligent transportation systems to understand how they should be applied to the CrashHelp system. Finally, the study investigates the potential sustainability of the CrashHelp system in several respects, including deployment in regions with little prior infrastructure, as well as in more urban and developed areas. This included investigating business models and deployment models for delivering CrashHelp as a product or service in the future.
The Large-Scale Implementation of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) in Community Practice Settings: An Examination of Client and Implementation Outcomes
(2018-07) Donisch, Katelyn
Although significant progress has been made in the development of trauma-focused evidence-based treatments (EBTs) for children and adolescents, the transfer of these interventions from academic to community practice settings remains challenging. This investigation is one of the first to assess the statewide implementation of a popular trauma-focused EBT for youth in routine practice settings. Using nine years of baseline and follow-up data, this investigation examined the implementation of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) with 2,980 clients, 596 clinicians, and 75 community practice agencies. Clients were highly traumatized, reporting exposure to an average of four trauma types (SD = 2.85). Multilevel modeling indicated that clients participating in TF-CBT demonstrated statistically significant reductions in posttraumatic stress symptomatology from baseline to follow-up, as well as self- and parent-reported reductions in emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity-inattention, peer problems, and the overall impact of these difficulties from baseline to follow-up. Clients also showed a statistically significant self- and parent-reported improvement in prosocial relations from baseline to follow-up. Although clinician TF-CBT implementation fidelity was not related to changes in client outcomes from baseline to follow-up, both clinician license and supervisory status were statistically significantly related to implementation fidelity score. Findings suggest that the large-scale implementation of TF-CBT is a promising approach to increasing the availability of trauma-focused EBTs in routine practice settings, while also reducing the primary and secondary effects of trauma in the lives of children and their families.
Lifetime Adversities, Risk, Resilience and Family Cohesion Among a National Sample of Latinx Immigrants Living in the U.S.
(2019-05) Cooper, Daniel
Background: The research literature provides strong evidence of the adverse impact of cumulative stress on individual and family life. The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the construct validity of a cumulative measure of lifetime adversities and (b) assess the moderating effects of several cultural risk (acculturation stress, perceived discrimination) and protective factors (social support, ethnic identity) on the relationship between cumulative lifetime adversities and family cohesion among U.S. Latinx immigrants. Method: Data came from a cross-sectional secondary dataset, called the HCHS – SOL Sociocultural Ancillary Study. The sample (N = 3,632) was identified using stratified random probability sampling in four of the largest Latinx metropolitan areas: the Bronx, San Diego, Chicago, and Miami. Six Latinx subgroups were included in this study: Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, Dominicans, South Americans, and Central Americans. Results: Results from a confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor model of cumulative lifetime adversities, including childhood trauma, current stress, and chronic stress. Invariance testing suggested that the measure functioned equivalently across the six Latinx subgroups. Results from a latent moderation analysis suggested that social support buffered the association between cumulative lifetime adversities and family cohesion; whereas discrimination exacerbated the association between cumulative lifetime adversities and family cohesion. Unexpectedly, acculturation stress buffered the association between cumulative lifetime adversities and family cohesion. Several potential explanations are discussed. Conclusions: Results can be used to inform the development of mental health interventions and prevention programs tailored to the specific needs of Latinx immigrant populations exposed to adversity and cultural stressors. Implications for the immigrant paradox are also discussed.
Los Campos de la Memoria: the concentration camp as a site of memory in the narrative of Max Aub.
(2009-08) Dickey, Eric
This dissertation explores constructions of memory and testimony in the concentration-camp narrative of Spanish author Max Aub. One of the most forgotten chapters of all Spanish Civil War and exile history is that pertaining to the Spanish Republicans who were interned in French concentration camps after the end of the Civil War. The concentration camp occupies a central place of memory and becomes a recurrent symbol and leitmotif that reappears in various manifestations throughout much of Aub's narrative work. In this dissertation, I investigate the symbolic value of the concentration camp as a discursive vehicle, a lieux de mémoire, that allows Aub to reconstruct his traumatic memories of the camp and convert them into narrative memory through writing. I examine the fictionalization of testimony in various literary genres and media, and analyze the use of different narrative strategies of remembrance and memory work to convey the experience of internment. My analysis of the camps goes beyond the traditional psychoanalytical conception of trauma as an individual phenomenon by exploring the collective dimension of trauma and memory. Aub's recounting of his own personal experiences exceeds a mere autobiographical portrait as it speaks in a collective voice that seeks to share the suffering of fellow exiles and camp survivors in order to form a new collective or group consciousness. Writing about the camps represents Aub's way of bearing witness to his trauma at the same time as it is his way of fighting the silence that has surrounded this experience shared by so many fellow Republican exiles. Through his testimonial writing, in both its individual and collective dimensions, Aub succeeds in a long-cherished goal, that of reinserting the memory traces of the Civil War, exile, and the camps back into Spain's historical and literary discourse.
Love, War, and Healing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: An Ethnographic Study of Torture-surviving Couples' Experiences in Multi-couple Group Therapy
(2015-05) Morgan, Erin
Citizens of the DRC experienced widespread and devastating torture at the hands of both government and rebel soldiers during the wars between 1998 and 2004. Among couples in which both partners survived, many separated or divorced after the war; intact couples suffered tremendous relationship stress; and parents and children struggled with relational and behavioral problems. In this dissertation I explored the experiences of torture-surviving couples who participated in a 10-session multi-couple group therapy (MCGT) intervention in 2008 designed to address the effects of torture and war trauma in Pweto, Katanga, DRC, as well as the feasibility of the intervention. Feasibility components included: acceptability, demand, implementation, practicality, and limited efficacy. Feasibility was found to be good for most components, with challenges mostly related to resources and training. Using critical ethnography as a guideline, I conducted individual or dyadic qualitative interviews with the wife, husband, or both partners of all 13 MCGT couples regarding their pre-war, wartime, and post-war group-related experiences as individuals and in their relationships with each other and with their children. Participants reported wide-ranging and profound negative effects of the war on their individual and relational health; mostly positive experiences, including marital and peer connection and relationship growth during the MCGT; and a number of improvements in mental health at the individual, couple, and family levels post-intervention. Clinical implications include that using relational interventions to promote trauma healing can be beneficial when the approaches are based on principles that inform effective therapies from both trauma treatment and couple treatment fields. Research and capacity-building implications include the need for increased action, rather than continued calls for action, to prioritize funding, research, training, and clinical priorities that match the increasingly clear utility of relational approaches to treating the effects of traumatic stress, including experiences of war and torture.
The Melancholy of Schooling: A Critical Ethnographic Study of Race, Trauma, and Learning in a High School English Classroom
(2017-06) Grinage, Justin
This year-long critical ethnographic study discusses the difficulties that arose when a multiracial class of 12th grade high school English students engaged in learning surrounding the reality of racism in the United States amid public displays of police brutality. Most notably, three high-profile cases of racial violence committed against black males, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, took place within five months of each other and coincided with the school year that I conducted my fieldwork for this study. Using the psychoanalytic concept of racial melancholia (Cheng, 2001) as a theoretical framework, I demonstrate how repressed forms of racial trauma and grief are experienced through the process of teaching and learning and how these processes are connected to larger formations of American racialization. My analyses focuses on the psycho-social (Frosh & Baraitser, 2008) construction, production, and transmission of trauma in the context of learning about race in the classroom. I place racial melancholia in conversation with theories of history (Benjamin, 1969), mourning (Freud, 1917), emotion (Ahmed, 2004), haunting (Frosh, 2013), whiteness (Thandeka, 1999) and affect (Massumi, 2015) to document the various ways that both the students and the classroom teacher struggled to learn and teach about racism. I argue that melancholic trauma and racial loss permeates American identities as a result of the nation’s extensive history of denying its racial transgressions. The implications of the study emphasize that we must learn to identify and work through unresolved racial grief if we are to improve our comprehension of race and engender anti-racist agency in the face of persistent systemic and individual acts of racial subjugation. This dissertation makes a distinct contribution to social justice approaches to education by underscoring the generative and productive possibilities for designing curriculum and employing critical pedagogies that center on understanding racial trauma.
Navigating Traumatic Stress, Substance Use and Parental Incarceration: A Phenomenological Study
(2021-06) Bailey, Molly
Mass incarceration in the United States has left millions of parents behind bars. These parents face barriers to wellbeing throughout their lifespan, navigating demographic and structural barriers, cumulative disadvantage characterized by stress, harsh institutional practices and sociopolitical factors impacting their access to resources pre, during, and post incarceration. Little to no research has explored the intersection of traumatic stress, substance use and parental incarceration. Guided by ecological systems, family stress, and critical social science theories this study explores the lived experiences of parents who have been incarcerated, exposed to traumatic stress, and substance use. Employing hermeneutic phenomenology, qualitative interviews were conducted focusing on the way parents see and make meaning around navigating this milieu in their lives. Seven essential themes emerged from this analysis: (a) Interconnections between traumatic stress, substance use and incarceration (b) Stress pile-up characterizes life, (c) Peer relationships are critical, (d) Many information gaps exist, (e) Incarceration is harmful, (f) Spirituality is transformative resource, and (g) Desire for a better life. Primarily current policies and services for justice-involved families are not family oriented, systemic, or preventative and lack an overall fit with the lived experiences of the parents in this study. Theories guiding intervention development for justice-involved families need to account for proximal processes that impact life trajectories. Policies need to be just and consider the impact of the family, and traditionally siloed sectors need to work together to bring about healing and well-being for justice-involved families.
A prospective study of potentially traumatic events: associations between types and dimensions of events and outcomes.
(2012-06) Anders, Samantha Lee
The purposes of this study were to assess lifetime and recent exposure to potentially traumatic life events (PTE) among undergraduate and community college students, to assess the relation between event exposure and a broad range of outcomes (i.e., mental and physical health, life satisfaction, GPA) and to compare students who were exposed to a PTE to those who were not exposed, on changes in functioning on a broad range of outcomes (e.g., PTSD, distress, life satisfaction, world assumptions). Undergraduate students from a Midwestern university (n = 842) and a community college (n = 242) completed online measures of lifetime event exposure and outcomes at Time 1 (T1) and recent event exposure and outcomes at Time 2 (T2) two months later. PTEs assessed included events that did and did not meet the definition of a traumatic event (i.e., PTSD Criterion A1) in the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000) as well as directly (e.g., own life-threatening illness) and indirectly (e.g., others' illness) experienced events. Individuals who experienced an event between T1 and T2 and said that it had caused them considerable or extreme distress made up the PTE group (n = 153). The no PTE group (n = 198) consisted of individuals who either did not experience an event between T1 and T2 or experienced an event that caused them no distress. Students reported experiencing many lifetime and recent Criterion A1 and non-A1 events; community college students reported more events than did university students. Generally, individuals who reported more lifetime events also reported poorer outcomes (e.g., poorer health) at T1. The number of non-Criterion A1 and directly experienced events tended to be more strongly correlated with negative outcomes than were the number of Criterion A1 and indirectly experienced events reported at T1. Controlling for number of lifetime traumas and neuroticism, the PTE group reported significantly more change in mental and physical health symptoms and world assumptions than the no PTE group, and reported more reliable change in outcomes. Overall, however, the amount of change in the PTE group was small.
The prosthetic life: theatrical performance, survivor testimony and the Terezín Ghetto, 1941-1963.
(2009-10) Peschel, Lisa A.
During all periods in postwar Czechoslovakia when the World War II Jewish ghetto at Terezín (in German, Theresienstadt) could be discussed in the public sphere, Czech-Jewish Holocaust survivors created and circulated narratives about the cultural life of the ghetto and their own experience of agency and pleasure while engaged in theatrical performances. Focusing on two periods, the immediate postwar years (1945-47) and an early point in the political thaw leading to the Prague Spring (1963), I examine testimony that survivors addressed to their fellow Czechs in the public sphere as a rhetorical performance in its own right. The constative and the performative aspects of testimony have shifted over time; in each period, survivors needed or wanted their testimony to achieve different effects, and they provided different information about theatrical performance in the ghetto. The survivors clearly adjusted their narratives in response to period-specific pressures as they tried to reinforce both their subjectivity and their subject position in postwar Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, the testimony of both periods shares a consistent core of themes, suggesting that theatrical performance in the ghetto functioned as a social practice that increased the prisoners' resilience and ability to cope with the traumatic events occurring in the ghetto on a day-to-day basis. Their postwar testimony reveals a related function: they resisted objectification within the sometimes hostile environment of postwar Czechoslovakia by establishing and conveying the meaning they ascribed to their own experience, thus remaining speaking subjects.

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