22 Aug Resources for Healing Charlottesville
It’s been a rough 10 days for Charlottesville.
If you’re swinging from anger to fear to depression – you’re not alone.
These are common responses to grief.
ReadyKids is here to provide hope and healing for children and families in Charlottesville who are struggling.
Survivors, parents, first responders, therapists and teachers may need extra support following the events of last weekend.
For them our counseling team created a comprehensive list of resources to process the violence we witnessed.
Resources for Survivors
- Tips for Survivors of a Disaster or Other Traumatic Event: Managing Stress—This tip sheet gives stress prevention and management tips for dealing with the effects of trauma, mass violence, or terrorism. Lists tips to relieve stress, describes how to know when to seek professional help, and provides accompanying resources. Also available in Spanish.
- Coping with Grief after Community Violence – This SAMHSA tip sheet offers introduces some of the signs of grief and anger after an incident of community violence, provides useful information about to how to cope with grief. And offers tips for helping children deal with grief.
- Effects of traumatic stress after mass violence, terror, or disaster—This National Center for PTSD webpage describes the emotional, cognitive, physical, and interpersonal reactions that disaster survivors may experience and discusses the potentially severe stress symptoms that may lead to lasting PTSD, anxiety disorders, or depression. Information on how survivors can reduce their risk of psychological difficulties and to recover most effectively from disaster stress is also provided.
- Media coverage of traumatic events: Research on effects—The National Center for PTSD presents information on the effects of intense media exposure following a disaster. The website describes the association between watching media coverage of traumatic events and stress symptoms. Guidance for providers who work with children and their parents to avoid retraumatization is also provided.
Resources for Parents
- Parent tips for helping adolescents after disasters—This table lists possible reactions, suggested responses, and examples of things parents can do and say to children affected by a disaster.
- Parent tips for helping infants and toddlers after disasters—This table lists possible reactions, how to understand them, and suggestions that can help parents
of infants and toddlers cope with their emotions after a disaster. - Parent tips for helping preschool-age children after disasters—This table lists possible reactions, suggested responses, and examples of things parents can do and say to preschool-age children affected by a disaster.
- Parent tips for helping school-age children after disasters—This table lists possible reactions, suggested responses, and examples of things parents can do and say to school-age children after a disaster.
Resources for First Responders (police, E.R. staff, clergy, etc.)
- Preventing and Managing Stress: Tips for Disaster Responders—This SAMHSA tip sheet provides tips to help disaster response workers prevent and manage stress. Includes strategies to help responders prepare for their assignment, use stress-reducing precautions during the assignment, and manage stress in the recovery phase of the assignment.
- A Guide to Managing Stress in Crisis Response Professions—This SAMHSA pocket guide provides first responders with information on signs and symptoms of stress and offers simple, practical techniques for minimizing stress responses prior to and during disaster response.
- Understanding compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction: Tips for disaster responders—This SAMHSA DTAC podcast can help disaster behavioral health professionals learn about the positive and negative effects of helping disaster survivors.
- Psychological First Aid: How You Can Support Well-being in Disaster Victims— This fact sheet by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network explains how disaster response workers can use psychological first aid to help people in distress after a disaster.
Resources for Therapists
- Talking to Kids about Discrimination – This document can help parents and other caretakers understand how to broach the topics of
discrimination and difference with young children. - APA Race in America: Tips on Talking with Children About Racism – A brief APA Psychology Today blog about discussing race with children. This was designed for parents and can be used by mental health clinicians.
- Building resilience to manage indirect exposure to terror – This helpful resource provides information you can use to support preparedness and self-care for play therapists, colleagues, and caregivers. The description from the website reads: “Acts of terror are purposefully designed to scare people and make them fearful for the safety of their community and their loved ones … Taking steps to build resilience — the ability to adapt well to unexpected changes and events — can help people manage distress and uncertainty.”
Resources for Teachers
- Teachers—This fact sheet can help parents, caregivers, and teachers recognize and address problems in children and teens affected by a mass casualty event. Readers can learn about signs of stress reactions that are common in young survivors at different ages, how to help children through grief.
- Teaching Tolerance – The Teaching Tolerance website has lesson plans for students as young as kindergarten that cover bias and social justice.
- National Association for School Psychologists, Lesson Plan and Resources on Race and Privilege – From this comprehensive site – “In light of the recent events, we encourage you to access our social justice resources to navigate conversations on race and privilege. As schools reopen nationwide, now is the time to advocate for professional development around this important issue. View our lesson plan for middle and high school students, as well as other resources on implicit bias, racism and prejudice, and more.”
- NPR Resources for Educators To Use In The Wake Of Charlottesville – An NPR page that lists a number of resources to use in schools to explore and understand the event and related concepts.
- 10 Children’s Books That Help White Kids Understand What Children of Color Are Up Against – This site has books across age ranges and complexity and provides brief descriptions of the books.
- Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide – A guide from the Southern Poverty Law Center that sets out 10 principles for fighting hate in communities. The guide provides information about how to engage with the media, definitions of terms, such as hate crimes and bias incident, and ways to support victims.