By Erika Filter, National Press Foundation, January 24, 2023
Children who arrive in the U.S. with their families can experience multiple layers of challenges, including mental and emotional trauma, poverty, etc. Monica Romo, a senior program coordinator with the University of Texas at Austin’s Girasol program, trains the staffers of organizations that support immigrant families’ mental health. She explained what constitutes trauma, where it comes from, and how navigate it to The Future of the American Child fellows in McAllen, Texas.
4 TAKEAWAYS:
➀ Trauma is the response to the event, not the event itself. “It’s all about how we internalize that event, how it affects us, and how it changes the way that we view when we function in the world,” Romo said. She said acute trauma occurs after one intense event, like a car accident, but chronic trauma occurs repeatedly over a long period of time, in situations such as abusive households. Complex trauma involves a combination of types of traumas. “The majority of the immigrants that I have worked with in my career have complex trauma,” Romo said.
Trauma responses are necessary to survive stressful events, but they become disruptive after the fact. Panic attacks and self-destructive behaviors are some common symptoms of trauma. For children, trauma often manifests in interpersonal relationships and learning environments. Children may have emotional outbursts, hyperactivity or a lack of impulse control in response to trauma. Children may also experience depression, changes in sleep or separation anxiety after a traumatic event. Romo said during the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, the immigrant children she worked with became very attached to their caretakers. “Two days after meeting this person, they could not be separated from them,” she said. “But they were coping with having been separated from their parent.”
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