Healing Horizons: Weekly News & Research - August 15, 2024
Welcome to our weekly news show, Healing Horizons, hosted by experts Bri Twombly and Alison Cebulla. Dive into the most recent updates on trauma-informed care practices, positive and adverse childhood experiences, and the critical concept of psychological safety. Each episode is designed to keep you informed on the latest research, trends, and best practices in these essential areas. Whether you're a healthcare professional, educator, or simply passionate about mental health, our show provides valuable insights and practical advice. Stay tuned for in-depth discussions and expert interviews that will enhance your understanding and application of trauma-informed care and psychological safety.
Here are the news stories and research we featured:
JCU tools to enable dentists to address domestic, sexual violence (dentalnews.pk)
James Cook University (JCU) has launched a groundbreaking set of tools designed to assist dentists across Australia in recognizing and responding to patients affected by domestic and sexual violence (DSV), enabling professionals to handle situations effectively.
Developed by experts from JCU’s Dentistry and Social Work departments, the initiative includes educational videos and documents that focus on trauma-informed care, as well as legal and ethical considerations.
The resources offer role-playing scenarios, strategies for working with First Nations Australians, and best practices to avoid unintended consequences when assisting victim-survivors.
The Australian Dental Council has made it a requirement for all graduates to demonstrate competency in recognizing, assessing, and responding to domestic and family violence.
Four years ago, Idaho had 17 locations where victims could receive sexual assault exams, and only three of them had nurses trained in sexual assault forensics. Today, Idaho has 231 trained sexual assault nurse examiners, or SANE nurses, who can work out of 37 facilities. By the end of the year, Idaho State Police plan to increase that number to at least 250.
Eighteen counties in Idaho have no facility where a person could receive a sexual assault exam by a trained SANE nurse. Those 18 counties are home to more than 198,000 people
The Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Center has a live calendar that gives law enforcement access to which nurses are available and on-call to provide the exams. The organization hasn’t needed more than one nurse at a time, but they have had four or five day stretches with no nurse on call.
All of the nurses have full-time jobs, and serving as a SANE nurse is an additional job for them. If no one is on-call when hospitals or crisis centers request a SANE nurse, a mass text message will go out to trained nurses in the area to see if someone is available.
Vicarious trauma and having to possibly testify in court create additional stress for nurses
Idaho State Police also has grant funding available for 17 “soft interview rooms” in Idaho this year. Investigators use soft interview rooms to talk to victims after an assault has occurred. Those rooms are designed to look less hostile than most rooms in police stations, with couches instead of metal tables, or softer lighting rather than harsh overhead lights.
The Idaho Legislature passed a new law, effective July 1, that unintentionally prohibits minors from getting sexual assault exams, or rape kit exams, without parental consent. This becomes problematic if the perpetrator of the child’s sexual assault is a parent, family member, or close family friend, according to Wetherelt
A court pilot program to reduce the time children spend in foster care has begun accepting families in three counties in NC. The Safe Babies Court now accepts families in Mitchell, New Hanover, and Yancey counties.
The court program came about through a report issued in December 2023 by the Chief Justice’s Task Force on Adverse Childhood Experiences — Informed Courts. The task force recommended implementing Safe Babies Court for a three-year initiative.
The purpose of Safe Babies Court is to connect children ages from birth through age 3 and their families involved in the child welfare court system with intensive support and services designed to promote healthy child development with a safe and timely permanency placement.
Pre-K providers on the front line of dealing with growing mental health needs (medicalxpress.com)
Since COVID-19 began educators have noticed that children are demonstrating significantly more delays, especially in speech. Behaviors being witnessed are severe aggression toward adults, including hitting, biting, and spitting; self-injurious behavior where a child will throw themselves on the floor or smack themselves; and constant screaming as a way to cope with sensory overload.
Early childhood providers need more help, but the current mental health system for getting pre-school-aged children evaluated is slow, fragmented, complex, and difficult for a parent to navigate.
Instead of pushing children out, the Children First's subcommittee is recommending more funding for specialized teacher training, for adapting their centers to create inclusive environments, and for implementing rapid interventions.
"Just as $100 million was allocated for mental health funding for K-12 schools, we recommend equal funding for children in early childhood programs who are experiencing mental health challenges," the report notes.
JAMA Psychiatry, July 2024
longitudinal cohort study of 2597 recent trauma survivors in the US
Having access to residential greenspace was found to support the development of resilience in people
Efforts to improve access and quality of urban greenspace may benefit the millions of individuals exposed to trauma each year
Individual trauma interventions may be strengthened by adding greenspace exposure
BMC Medical Education, July 2024
Researchers interviewed 31 health care providers (physicians, nurses, and social workers) working in Ontario, Canada to learn what they identified as their specific education and training needs to recognize and care for sex trafficked persons.
Participants voiced their need for specialized sex trafficking education as well as role specific training to combat their sense of inadequacy and provide better care for their patients.
Participants’ education needs ranged from requiring the definition of domestic sex trafficking and the frequency of its occurrence, to the various circumstances associated with increased risk of recruitment into sex trafficking.
In terms of desired training and specific skills, participants wanted to learn how to identify a person being sex trafficked, broach the subject with a patient, know what to do next including access to local resources and referrals, as well as connections to other critical services, such as legal and housing.
The results can be used to inform the design and content of education and training on sex trafficking for health care providers.
Psychological Science, August 2024
University of California, San Francisco researchers looked at the effects of dyadic therapy on a biomarker they dubbed “age acceleration” that tells how fast or slow a person’s body is aging compared to their chronological age.
The study compared two groups of Bay Area children between the ages of 2 and 6 years old with traumatic experiences. Before treatment, both groups had similar rates of biological age acceleration.
More than 80% of the children in the treatment group and two-thirds of the comparison group were Latinx, which is important because families of color and low-income families are more frequently exposed to trauma than white families with higher incomes, yet they are typically not included in medical research.
One group received up to 20 weekly sessions of Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP). The other group did not receive CPP.
The 45 children who participated in the therapy had less age acceleration than the 110 who didn’t.
Findings suggest that CPP supported slower biological aging, likely through promoting safe, protective, and emotionally responsive caregiving
JAMA Network, August 2024
Researchers aimed to test evidence of the transmission of biological embedding of life experience across generations by analyzing maternal ACEs and age acceleration measured in mothers during pregnancy and in their children at birth.
883 mother-child dyads
The findings of this study suggest that maternal ACEs may be associated with age acceleration later in life, including during pregnancy, supporting a role for maternal ACEs in offspring development and health later in life.
The findings suggest that maternal ACEs may also affect the growing male fetus. This is consistent with previous findings of cumulative maternal ACEs being associated with increased biological aging in children and being more pronounced in male individuals
Journal of the American Heart Association, August 2024
A total of 5926 Canadian, white‐collar workers (3021 women and 2905 men) free of cardiovascular disease at baseline were followed for an average of 18 years.
Psychosocial stressors at work from the job strain and effort-reward imbalance models are associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation, separately and in combination.
Job strain was associated with an 83% atrial fibrillation risk increase
Workplace prevention strategies targeting these psychosocial stressors at work may be effective to reduce the burden associated with atrial fibrillation.
Safety Should Be a Performance Driver (hbr.org)
Harvard Business Review
considerable evidence suggests that most companies mismanage safety
Most executives frame safety as a compliance issue. They see it as a cost and, consequently, they underinvest in it.
For safety to be an effective performance driver, an organization must ensure that everyone is aligned on what safety means and on how to measure success. It must also introduce practices to anticipate risks and prevent incidents before they materialize, target training on those practices, and incentivize employees to improve safety.
Workplace bullying isn't illegal in PA, lawmakers aim to change that (abc27.com)
Workplace bullying and psychological abuse are not illegal in Pennsylvania, but lawmakers raised the issue during a policy committee hearing Wednesday.
House Majority Policy Committee members heard from advocates, survivors and attorneys about concerns of a public health threat and the need to protect Pennsylvania’s workers from what researchers call a silent epidemic.
Experts testified before committee members about the need for “psychological safety,” in which workers feel safe to share their thoughts, ask questions and admit mistakes without negative consequences.
No laws have been proposed yet, as Wednesday’s hearing was intended as a starting point to explore the issue of workplace psychological safety and hear from stakeholders and experts.
PA House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D-Phila./Delaware) called for a committee meeting to discuss the need for a Psychological Safety Act that would protect workers from this type of abuse.
“Everyone deserves to be safe at work – that means free from physical harm as well as mental or psychological abuse,” McClinton said. “While there are laws on the books to protect workers from environmental hazards, we need to do more to protect people from workplace psychological hazards like bullying and oppressive treatment that create toxic work environments and cause undue stress and anxiety for workers.”
