Question and Answer

Lois Oppenheim: I’d like to open this up to the audience now, but before I do I would like to ask Dr. Marans to say something more about the replication of this paradigm throughout the United States.

Steven Marans: The mental health law enforcement paradigm has been replicated in different forms throughout the United States and is moving ahead in different ways. The latest version alerts responding officers to what you do when you get on the scene. How you help stabilize situations is what we’re currently working on. CFTSI, the early intervention peri-traumatic model, is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), through the Childhood Traumatic Stress Network, and we’re one of the development sites. Part of our task is to train and disseminate, so that is what we are doing. Safe Horizons’ Child Advocacy Centers have all been trained; we’ve trained some 30 places around the country and are working very closely with the National Child Alliance, which oversees 900 forensic evaluation centers throughout the United States. We’re working, wave by wave, to disseminate this early model, which falls very nicely in line with other evidence-based trauma treatments.

Lois Oppenheim: A significant common thread I have heard throughout the presentations is the “group,” whether in the patient community or the treatment community.

Steven Marans: I wouldn’t agree on the treatment side. I think it’s different in the context of the school climate issues that Jon [Cohen], Stuart [Twemlow], and Mark [Smaller] were referring to. Actually, with regard to the peri-traumatic period, there is a lot of evidence about the ways in which some of the more established group approaches have had more of a potentially contaminating effect and increased, rather than decreased, symptomatology. That said, the idea of increasing awareness within a community, within groups, and within professions is enormously important in terms of moving away, with support, from the “ge