I picked violence even though I was not exposed to
it as a child, as far as I can remember. However I do feel as if it is an important
subject. I am a part of an organization called NOVA, which is Network for
Overcoming Violence and abuse, so this subject is near and dear to my heart. NOVA is a network of public and private agency partners
connecting a community of trained adults to children and youth exposed to
violence — for trauma counseling, parenting support and other family assistance
(NOVA 2012). I am a part of this organization not just because it is my job but
because I care about the welfare of our children and know the damaging effects
of what this exposure can do to them. I am a
CSEFEL Specialist (center on social emotional foundations of early learning) at
LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN as a part of their Community
Health & Well Being division. My job is to train childcare providers on
dealing with and identifying children that have behavior problems or that have
been exposed to domestic violence. I train them on teaching children social
emotional skills and dealing with children that have behavior problems. I am
the support system for teachers so that their teaching can go beyond school
work and teach children ways to deal with problems faced in their lives.
The Network for
Overcoming Violence and Abuse
(NOVA) is a Shelby County system of care being initiated in Memphis
neighborhoods in the Raleigh-Frayser and Hickory Hill areas that connects
children exposed to violence and abuse - and their families - to counseling and
other support services. Too many families in our communities - and far too many
children - have experienced the trauma that comes with seeing or experiencing
violence of all kinds. The good news is help is available.
NOVA is a response to the problem of trauma that happens after exposure to
violence. NOVA offers all the help that children and their families need to put
the hurt behind them, to heal, and to live their lives with hope. Real hope.
_________________________________________________________________________
I found an article on violence in Iraq and its impact on the children that witness it.
Children of war: the generation traumatized
by violence in Iraq
Growing up in a
war zone takes its toll as young play games of murder and mayhem
Iraqi boys in a
refugee camp in Baghdad play with toy guns. Photograph: Namir
Noor-Eldeen/Reuters
The car stopped
at the makeshift checkpoint that cut across the muddy backstreet in western
Baghdad. A sentry appeared. "Are you Sunni or Shia?" he barked,
waving his Kalashnikov at the driver. "Are you with Zarqawi or the Mahdi
army?"
"The Mahdi
army," the driver said. "Wrong answer," shouted the sentry,
almost gleefully. "Get him!"
The high metal
gate of a nearby house was flung open and four gun-toting males rushed out.
They dragged the driver from his vehicle and held a knife to his neck. Quickly
and efficiently, the blade was run from ear to ear. "Now you're
dead," said a triumphant voice, and their captive crumpled to the ground.
Then a moment
of stillness before the sound of a woman's voice. "Come inside boys! Your
dinner is ready!" The gunmen groaned; the hapless driver picked himself up
and trundled his yellow plastic car into the front yard; the toy guns and
knives were tossed by the back door. Their murderous game of make-believe would
have to resume in the morning.
Abdul-Muhammad
and his five younger brothers, aged between six and 12, should have been at
school. But their mother, Sayeeda, like thousands of parents in Iraq's perilous
capital city, now keeps her boys at home. Three weeks ago, armed men had
intercepted their teacher's car at the school gates, then hauled him out and
slit his throat. Just like in their game.
"That day
they came home and they were changed because of the things they'd seen,"
said Sayeeda as she ladled rice into the boys' bowls. "The youngest two
have been wetting their beds and having nightmares, while Abdul-Muhammad has
started bullying and ordering everyone to play his fighting games. I know
things are not normal with them. My fear is one day they will get hold of real
guns. But in these times, where is the help?"
The boys live
with their widowed mother and uncle in a modest family house in al-Amil, a once
peaceful, religiously mixed suburb in western Baghdad that is yielding to the
gunmen, street by street. Similar tales of growing up in the war zone are heard
across the country.
Parents,
teachers and doctors contacted by the Guardian over the past three months cite
a litany of distress signals sent out by young people in their care - from
nightmares and bedwetting to withdrawal, muteness, panic attacks and violence
towards other children, sometimes even to their own parents.
Amid the
statistical haze that enshrouds civilian casualties, no one is sure how many
children have been killed or maimed in Iraq. But psychologists and aid
organisations warn that while the physical scars of the conflict are all too
visible - in hospitals and mortuaries and on television screens - the mental
and emotional turmoil experienced by Iraq's young is going largely unmonitored
and untreated.
In a rare study
published last week, the Association of Iraqi Psychologists (API) said the
violence had affected millions of children, raising serious concerns for future
generations. It urged the international community to help establish child
psychology units and mental health programmes. "Children in Iraq are seriously
suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of
kidnapping and explosions," the API's Marwan Abdullah told IRIN, the
UN-funded news agency. "In some cases, they're found to be suffering
extreme stress," he said.
Sherif Karachatani,
a psychology professor at the University of Sulaymaniya, said: "Every day
another innocent child is orphaned or sees terrible things children should
never see. Who is taking care of the potentially enormous damage being done to
a generation of children?"
There are
well-founded fears, he said, that the "relentless bloodshed and the lack
of professional help will see Iraq's children growing up either deeply scarred
or so habituated to violence that they keep the pattern going as they enter
adulthood".
The country's overstretched
hospitals cannot cope with psychological trauma and many of the best doctors
have either fled the country or been killed. The problems are compounded by the
stigma that psychological and psychiatric care carries. "They don't bring
their children in for treatment, fearing they will be labelled as mad," Dr
Karachatani said.
The field is left to small local
and foreign NGOs and to hard-pressed Iraqi psychologists, who are not immune to
bloodshed. In December, Harith Hassan, one of Iraq's most prominent child
psychologists, was shot dead as he drove to work. A regular commentator in the
Iraqi media known for his ruthlessly honest comments about the Iraqi mindset,
Dr Hassan had worked with victims of trauma. And he had been determined to wean
Iraqi youth from their obsession with the gun.
