Puerto Rico after Maria: Trauma team returns

UMICPT curriculum

When our team travels to a traumatized area, we use the model of “training the trainers.” We teach local mental health professionals and teachers how to recognize some of the negative sequelae of trauma in children, including PTSD, complex traumatic grief, depression, and phobias. It is our aim to train them, so they can train others to recognize these conditions, and provide evidence-based interventions, which in turn can help to alleviate symptoms and promote healing. Interventions focus on efforts to build resiliency in children, and the model is collaborative, interactive, and experiential.

Our students already have some training in mental health. We seek to use their training and their experiences in our exercises. They learn from us, and we also learn much from them. When they share their experiences with us, we learn about their cultural values, which in turn enables us to provide culturally sensitive training. Skills for recovering from trauma include psychoeducation, relaxation and visualization training, dialectical behavioral therapy strategies for stress reduction, art therapy, narrative therapy, mindfulness training, and group therapy.

Future plans

UMICPT plans to make two more trips to Puerto Rico. A group of trainees will be further trained to serve as trainers to others in some of the techniques they have been taught. There is a plan to conduct a needs assessment in the schools and train teachers during the visit. Trained teachers would then have the option of introducing a weekly mental hygiene hour into the schools, with the aim of providing some relief to the children suffering from PTSD and other psychiatric problems.

Judith R. Milner, MD, MEd, SpecEd, is a general, child, and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice in Everett, Wash. She has traveled with various groups over the years in an effort to alleviate some of the suffering caused by war and natural disaster. Her predominant association has been with the International Center for Psychosocial Trauma. She also has worked with Step Up Rwanda Women and Pygmy Survival Alliance, as well as on the Committee for Women at the American Psychiatric Association and the Consumer Issues Committee, the Committee on Diversity and Culture, and the Membership Committee for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.