By training professionals to treat trauma in youth across the nation, the institute extends the School of Social Work mission far beyond campus.
Complex trauma among adolescents, which involves both exposure to traumatic events and the impact of those experiences, is not always easily recognized by mental health providers—even as tragic incidents like school shootings and other crimes committed by youth make the need to address it more critical. Since 2013, Adelphi’s Institute for Adolescent Trauma Treatment and Training, which was established through the School of Social Work, has been working to increase awareness of complex trauma. Its mission is to promote the development of trauma-informed systems and to provide training in state-of-the-art, trauma-focused services for children and families.
Co-directors Victor Labruna, PhD, and Mandy Habib, PsyD, said that the institute was established in recognition of the significant, lasting and far-reaching impact of complex trauma exposure on the individual, familial and societal levels.
“In addition to the institute being dedicated to raising awareness of the impact of complex trauma, our focus is also on providing clinicians the education and therapeutic tools to better serve children, adolescents and families who have experienced a lifetime of trauma,” said Dr. Habib.
Increased Need for Training
The institute is funded by two federal grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Labruna said its influence is broad, reaching more than 5,500 mental health professionals each year across the country through webinars, workshops and presentations, on a variety of topics including cyberbullying, female genital cutting, and the neurobiology of trauma and addiction. In addition, since 2021, over 800 mental health professionals have received intensive training in specific trauma interventions, resulting in more than 4,500 children and adolescents receiving state-of-the-art evidence-based trauma interventions.
Since 2017, when the institute applied for national grants, its reach has expanded from training those in the New York metropolitan area to mental health professionals nationwide in residential programs, schools and juvenile justice systems in Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, according to Dr. Labruna. “These clinicians are working with a wide range of traumatized populations, including refugee and asylum-seeking children, families experiencing homelessness, justice-involved youth, and youth with alcohol and substance use problems.”
Suffering a Long Time
Dr. Habib observed that as the construct of complex trauma becomes more visible both in professional mental health communities and in society more broadly, an increasing number of clinicians are seeking specialized training, and greater numbers of individuals are reaching out for more targeted services. Dr. Habib observed, “In recent years we’re getting more and more people saying ‘I’ve been suffering a long time, and I’ve tried lots of different treatments and I always thought there was something wrong with me, but I never realized trauma was at the core.’ For these individuals, having that knowledge not only shifts their perspective (from one of self-blame), but also shifts the treatment focus. Unfortunately, while there are growing numbers of mental health providers trained to treat complex trauma, there continues to be a dearth of programs, particularly in New York, that are trained in how to treat complex trauma in children, adolescents or adults.”
That’s why the institute is committed to creating a multidisciplinary workforce, skilled in the delivery of trauma-focused substance abuse prevention and screening services, said Dr. Labruna. “We’re also focused on supporting the provision of evidence-based trauma treatments to adolescents locally and nationally, with an emphasis on youth in schools, residential and juvenile justice settings, and continuing collaborations with local and national agencies [and] service systems to improve the quality of trauma-informed services by multidisciplinary providers.”
The institute’s workshops, which are each offered free of charge for up to 1,000 people through the School of Social Work, fill up within 48 hours. “And the people we get are engaged. They’re asking questions. If the speaker in a two-hour webinar is willing, huge numbers stay on for another half an hour. People do seem to want the information,” Dr. Habib said.
A Busy Year
Dr. Labruna attributes this interest to the institute’s efforts to raise awareness of its programs. In the past six months alone, it has presented nine different virtual trainings, including one titled “Trauma and Addiction: The Impact of the Social Environment on Addiction and the Neurobiology of Trauma” to 739 mental health clinicians from around New York state and the metropolitan area; provided consultation to social workers and counselors delivering services to unaccompanied immigrant minors at Kids in Need of Defense, a U.S.-based NGO; and conducted a two-day, in-person Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress training for mental health staff at Hinds Behavioral Health, a large social services agency serving families in Jackson, Mississippi. In addition, this spring, the institute completed its nine-month Real Life Heroes training with the Aurora Counseling Center in Colorado, which included 19 staff members.
And on September 20, it hosted one of the first large-scale, in-person trainings since the pandemic for 100 mental health professionals in Adelphi’s Ruth S. Harley University Center for an all-day training on complex trauma with Joseph Spinazzola, PhD, a nationally recognized expert in complex trauma.
Additionally, the video Remembering Trauma, a short film about complex trauma that the institute helped to create, has now been viewed more than 137,000 times, with 1,500 new views each month. “The young man in this video is based on a young man who was treated using one of the complex trauma interventions that we currently train on and developed,” Dr. Habib said.
The institute’s co-directors emphasized the importance that the curriculum they provide reflects the challenges that clinicians and community providers are currently seeing, as well as includes the latest insights from the field.
“At its core, complex trauma is relational and a big piece of how we’re addressing it is through building and capitalizing on relationships,” Dr. Habib added. “The clinicians we train will typically train together over time, forming relationships, sharing resources and leveraging knowledge with the shared vision of improving the lives of youth.”