How Well Does Trauma Counselling Work?

It should be available, but it's no one-size-fits-all therapy. Not everyone even needs it. The kind of single-session debriefing discussed in your link, LibertyD, reminds me of media reports of every tragedy now: "Counselors are on hand to help the children."

I've read accounts by trauma survivors who have wanted nothing to do with these no doubt well-meaning folks. Emotional trauma, like everything else, affects people in different ways. And it can take a while before the problem manifests itself.

My observation of it is that for some people, a bit of counselling can be helpful. For others it is more of a hindrance than a help. For another group, it seems to be downright dangerous.

Social workers here have a very strong political lobby group, so you'd probably have to accept their help, even if you knew it was not going to be of benefit to you.

I've always wondered whether a normal child from a loving home would be comfortable talking about topical grief with a total stranger--let alone be soothed into accepting the unpalatable Facts of Life.

Last month there was a particularly revolting murder in the Philadelphia area. A "girlfriend" lured the victim to a vacant lot with a promise of sex and three "friends" beat the victim to death. The four murderers split his paycheck.

As in many untimely deaths, the vacant lot turned into an impromptu shrine with flowers, cigarettes, stuffed animals and the like and became a gathering place for teens who were mourning the victim.

Several of these mourners were quoted in newspaper accounts as feeling that the grief counseling was meaningless because it changed nothing: not the fact of the death, not the injustice of the death, not the resentment of the injustice of the death.

I'm sure that the counselors want to help--but grief is a process which changes the mourners, not a psychic splinter that can be tweezered away.

Yeah, I know that counselling can at times be a life saver, but it seems that people aren't really given the time to let the event soak in. I remember seeing an interview with Oklahoma Governor Keating after 9/11, and he made the point that a lot of people affected by the OKC bombing saw their hardest moments a year after it happened.

EhBeth -- those poor social workers probably go through a lot from the people who don't want their help.

Noddy, I hope I don't sound insensitive here, but I'm curious about the shrines that are seemingly ever-present at any crime scene these days. It's like any time something horrible happens, people go into this weird instant mourning where simply being sad isn't enough. I wonder if this has anything to do with the emphasis that counsellors put on confronting the issue before you even know how you feel about it?

I don't know what to make of those shrines either. The media are always quick to film 'em, which no doubt leads to even more of them being created. At what point are people doing what they think they're supposed to be doing?

I think the Scene of the Tragedy Shrines can provide a healthy focus for mourning, particularly for adolescents and the inarticulate.

When the universe goes wildly out of kilter, the imperative to Do Something surfaces--even when there is nothing practical to be done.

I've always thought that candle lighting is a very sensible ritual in the Catholic church. During a crisis well-wishers can be dispatched to the nearest church to hope and pray out of the way.

By decorating the scene of a tragedy with ribbons or flowers or cigarettes or beer cans, the mourner can feel, "I'm doing something. I'm showing the world how I feel."

When I first read about Inner City Write-On coffins I was considerably taken aback. After thinking, I realized that the young and the inarticulate can be comforted by writing last messages to the dead. Again, the writer feels, "I'm doing something. I'm showing the world how I feel."

I don't make public shrines and if someone organized a shrine for me at the site of my death, that person would be the first on my list for some serious haunting.

Neither do I make rules for other people's emotions.

That makes sense -- the drive to do something. That's really the great thing to come out of tragedy -- everyone feels compelled to help or to do something respectful. So even if the counsellors or shrine builders don't hit home with everyone, the actions are simply their acting on the instinct (?) to be helpful.

LibertyD--

I'm fairly sure the counselors are paid to be helpful. When the emotion is "confusion" rather than true shock or grief, I'm sure they are.

A child--and an adolescent is a child--is prone to assume every event is "All About Me". Further, children lack social sophistication. During a long maturation, an adult human being acquires coping skills. Children lack this cushion of knowledge.

A classmate is dead. What is appropriate? Wild tears? Quiet tears? I never liked Johnny much--did I cause his death? If I don't cry will everyone think I'm awful?

One-shot counseling can bring grief into perspective for those who are not close to the victim.

I'm sure they're paid to be helpful -- but I'd like to think that they're in that position because of some innate need to help.