How Intensive Trauma Therapy Can Help Youth—and Why It’s Worth Taking Time Off School
When a child or teen has a serious emotional issue, it often shows up in school: disruptive behaviors and/or academic under-achievement. So send them to therapy, right? With luck, they get a good therapist and meet for most of an hour each week, for months or even years. And with luck, eventually they make some progress. But it can take time. And meanwhile the child/teen may continue to suffer, or even further deteriorate. This can significantly impact academic progress.
Another option is intensive trauma-focused therapy, in which the child/teen works with their therapist for several full consecutive days. Most kids’ problems stem, at least in large part, from the trauma and/or loss that they have experienced, and the trauma-focused therapy directly targets those memories so the client can heal and no longer be symptomatic. We use the best research-supported trauma healing methods, such as EMDR.
The research on our intensive trauma-focused therapy indicates that most clients make great progress, that endures. For example, in our Wilmington, NC program, on the 0-10 “Problem Rating Scale” for the severity of presenting problems, our clients started with an average rating of 8 (quite severe) and by 12 weeks their average rating was 2 (mild). With an intensive, you can get about a year’s worth of work done in just a few days, and then be operating at a better level. An intensive can salvage what might otherwise have been a lost year of school.
One of the most common concerns that parents and adolescents have about completing an intensive is the time away from school. Concerns about falling behind in their studies or unexcused absences are understandable—but in practice, the opposite is usually true. When children/teens are struggling, it is already affecting their learning. They may already be struggling with their academic work and/or behaviors; they may already be losing time.
Participating in Intensive Trauma Therapy can improve attention and focus, in turn improving academic performance. An intensive can also lead to improved behaviors and reduced time out of school. Since mental health therapy is considered an excusable absence, adolescents would have the opportunity to make up any work missed or be excused from the assignments during the intensive. Guidance counselors can assist with notifying and preparing teachers for handling a student completing an intensive.
Taking a student out of school is not a setback—it is an investment in their well-being, safety, and long-term academic success.
