TRAUMATIZED TEENS NEED HELP

Truamatized Teens Need Help
by Andrew Malekoff©

Reports of teens murdering their parents have a way of getting reactions from the public that tell us a lot about ourselves. The first question many people raise is: Should these kids be tried as adults or subject to a more humane and child-friendly legal standard? But this doesn't address the problem of prevention. How do we stop them from killing in the first place?

In a culture that often glorifies violence increasing numbers of young people, when they reach a boiling point of anger or actual mental illness, might literally do anything to satisfy their frustrations or to gain attention. Bravado, especially for teenagers, is everything, and for any action that seems the slightest bit threatening - a put-down, a disagreement, a dirty look - they often will seek immediate retaliation.

The recent cases of a 12-year-old girl accused of strangling her mother in Freeport and a 17-year-old boy charged with choking his father in Wyandanch represent extreme outcomes, of course. But their origins are common: Children are caught in an escalating situation, usually with people they know, from which they cannot disengage, and they lack skills, aside from violence, for defusing it.

When the result is murder, the story gets into the news. But those of us who work with teenagers for a living are seeing an unpublicized increase in the kinds of cases that can lead to this sorry end: children and teens with serious emotional disturbances who are victims of childhood trauma or have witnessed domestic violence, and who are exhibiting unmanageable behavior.

When a child wakes up each morning with a sense of dread and fear, he approaches the day in a state of arousal and anxiety. He is likely to cope by lashing out and moving from impulse to action without pausing to reflect. Or, absent a capacity to soothe himself, he will turn his feelings inward, fueling depression, and suicidal and other self-destructive behaviors.

Society expects parents to do everything that's needed to solve this problem: to counter violent messages in the media, teach children problem-solving skills, and then keep them physically and emotionally safe. These are unrealistic expectations. Too many parents lack the information and wherewithal to accomplish this on their own, and many are themselves emotionally troubled. Parents need a system of support.

And children need order and consistency in their lives. They need safe places to go, with worthwhile things to do and opportunities for belonging. And they need relationships with competent adults who understand and care about them.If a young person can get all of this naturally within the family and from neighbors, a highly structured support program may not be necessary. The problem is that supportive communities and social structures have largely disappeared, especially in widely dispersed suburban communities like those on Long Island, where the first feature one notices are garages that are easy to slip into without interacting with or even seeing a neighbor.

Just weeks after the Columbine High School shootings, I met with a group of about 25 teens and adults from Long Island who gathered to address the impact of a distant horror that had hit so close to home. To the surprise of most of the adults, the teenagers said that what they really needed and wanted was closer relationships with adults - at home, at school and in the community. They were starving for someone to pay attention to them.Yet, they admitted that they also push grown-ups away. "Is this what you really want to happen?" I asked. The overwhelming response was an emphatic "No."This is a paradoxical aspect of young people's psychology that often confounds adults. They have a strong need for adult contact, coexisting with the need to be separate, expressed as "Understand me, but leave me alone."

This suggests that teenagers want adult support but are unlikely to go out of their way to seek it out. On Long Island there has been steady progress in the human services community toward programs that are based on partnerships with parents, schools, government agencies and community-based organizations that bring adult support out of private offices to where the teenage action is.

A prime example is the Intensive Support Program, a school-based mental health partnership between Nassau BOCES' Department of Special Education and my agency, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center. The program targets children and youth aged 5 to 21 with serious emotional disturbances, aiming to improve their social, emotional and academic development and prevent costly long-term placements in residential institutions by keeping them at home.

An effort intended to steer children away from violent activity and gang involvement by offering such services as conflict resolution, cultural activities and tutoring is occurring in the Westbury and Port Washington schools in the Helping Each Other Program for Latino youth. This collaboration with The Place Adolescent Services Center, which is also affiliated with the North Shore guidance center, matches trained high school mentors of Hispanic heritage with younger students.

The cutting edge of youth service work in the suburbs is to be where the kids are. Of course, there is a cost. But it's just a fraction of the cost to house troubled teenagers in a mental-health or juvenile justice institution.If legislators and government officials can get past the cost-cutting ploy of referring to such services as "discretionary," we will see much less youth violence, and certainly fewer murders, in the long run. These are essential human services that require a significant investment now, before it is too late.

Originally published in Newsday, July 2005.