@AliciaWhiskers
Perhaps it’s worth looking into the work that has been done with groups of traumatized children (and adults) prior to this. They are a lot of situations with significant similarities- war zones (especially sieges), natural disasters, refugee camps and mass shootings for example.
One of the things that’s really struck me about this is, we’re having a taste in the West of the kind of living conditions and situations that are often pretty commonplace in other parts of the world. L
There is some evidence when the trauma experienced is on a mass basis, rather than individualised, that the best approach is to improve the situation, rather than have targeted early psychological intervention:
PTSD as a result of mass trauma
I used to work in international development, and an anecdote that was used to illustrate this to help people get their heads round it.
During the (insert humanitarian disaster of your choice-often it’s Rwandan genocide, sometime it’s Darfur), western psychologists arriving on scene where baffled by the resistance of local relief agencies on the ground to trauma debriefings. When this was investigated the western agencies were told “But you just want the survivors to sit on their own, inside, in the dark, talking to a stranger about the awful things that have happened again and again. It’ll make them worse! They’ll relive it all. They should be moving around, be outside in the sun, with their friends, singing and dancing”.
Some of that’s obviously not possible, but movement, singing and dancing are. Basically Joe Wicks’ approach is very on the money- movement, fun, shared activity. Or people doing dance challenges on Tik-Tok.
This diagram outlining positive and negative responses is very helpful.
Snakes and Ladders
One of the people who developed it was involved in helping communities and families after Dunblane, and has been involved in trauma resolution in natural and created disasters like earthquakes, 9-11 and Sandy Hook.
This model was developed in order for professionals to be able to work with large numbers of individuals in a way that wasn’t re-traumatizing, and where there weren’t resources for a series on individual sessions.
Basically in response to a threat, there are useful ways to process anxiety (ladders) and ways that aren’t useful (snakes).
So basically it’s about light touches to guide people towards ladder responses rather than snake ones.
I really think the importance of physical movement, healthy expression and play can’t be overstated.
There is a lot of work on the importance of the body’s response to trauma, by people like Peter Levine that is very interesting. Basically don’t suppress physical and emotional responses, find a healthy outlet for them.