Responding to Trauma Early

Psychoanalytic perspectives have informed all of my psychotherapeutic work with children and adults as well as my teaching and supervision of trainees at the Yale School of Medicine. They have but also been central to the development of novel approaches to traumatized children and families who, too often, suffer alone, remaining unseen and untreated. The Child Development-Community Policing program (CD-CP), a psychoanalytically informed collaboration between law enforcement and mental health professionals, was developed to reverse this trend and to increase opportunities for 1) acute post-traumatic stabilization and 2) early identification, social support and engagement of impacted children and families in trauma-focused clinical care. A model for similar law enforcement–mental health partnerships in numerous communities around the US and abroad, the CD-CP experience has also informed the development of state and federal trauma-focused initiatives and as well as our direct responses to mass-impact events including 9/11, Newtown and COVID-19 as well to the development and national dissemination of Enhancing Law Enforcement Responses to Children Exposed to Violence (LE CEV) toolkit and training. Developed in collaboration with the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the US Department of Justice, the toolkit and training equips police with a developmentally/analytically-informed understanding of traumatized children and families to whom they respond on a regular basis.

The opportunity, necessity and experience of intervening early following traumatic events eventually led to our development of the only evidence-based early treatment, the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention (CFTSI). CFTSI significantly increases post-traumatic recovery by enhancing individual self-observing capacities and communication between impacted children and caregivers; equipping children and parents/caregivers to recognize and significantly reduce post-traumatic symptomat