Trauma-Informed Climate Resilience (CTIPP CAN September 2020)

Building Community-Based and Population-Level Mental Wellness and Resilience with Janet Pozmantier and Bob Doppelt

RESOURCES

SUMMARY: The CTIPP CAN September call focused on the connection between trauma-informed programs and one of the most pressing issues facing our world today -- Climate Change. We know that the disasters that are and will continue to be created by climate change increase the level of trauma in affected populations.

The first speaker on the September call, Janet Pozmantier, described a program she led in Houston following Hurricane Harvey to prepare schools to effectively deal with the increase in trauma and thus the increase in acting-out behavior students bring with them when they return to school after a disaster. The program involved providing trauma-informed training, in person or online, to almost every teacher in the Houston School District before the students returned after Harvey. The feedback from the teachers a year after school reopened confirmed that preparing teachers for the trauma that follows disasters gives them the tools they need to reduce problems and is money well spent. Attached are three attachments that supported her presentation.

The second speaker, Bob Doppelt, described the national initiative his organization, the International Transformational Resilience Coalition, has launched to prepare the entire country for the trauma that will impact everyone as a result of the disasters climate change is and will increasingly create. The trauma caused by climate change has the potential to harm all of us, so we must come together to form community in order to support one another.

The initiative involves drafting legislation for Congress to consider that would fund local community wellness coalitions with responsibility for putting into place programs in their community to help build the resilience needed to overcome the trauma that climate change will cause. Bob provided a draft of the legislation and described the steps they are taking to obtain Congressional support for the proposed legislation.

4:34 Policy Updates

13:44 Center for School Behavioral Health at Mental Health America of Greater Houston

14:16 Promoting Children's Behavioral Health Through Systems Change

15:08 Hurricane Harvey

18:23 Are the Kids Alright? Responding to Post-Harvey Trauma

20:15 Online Trauma Simulations for Educators

22:25 Puerto Rico and Maria

22:477 Texas Education Agency & American Red Cross

23:44 Q&A/Discussion

29:32 The Urgent Need, Methods, and Benefits of the New ITRC Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy

30:39 Humanity is in the Midst of a Civilization-Changing Event

32:14 One of the Impacts: More Frequent, Extreme, and Prolonged Disasters

33:25 Disasters Will Be Intermixed with Continual Toxic Stress Pileups That Affect Everyone Due to Cascading Disruptions to Ecological, Social, and Economic Systems

35:09 Combination of Accelerating Disasters and Toxic Stress Pileups

38:36 The Climate Emergency Will Force Us to Redefine Mental Health and Psychosocial Problems

40:17 The Climate Emergency Will Force Us to Redefine How to Prevent and Heal Mental Health and Psychosocial Problems

41:53 Our Approaches to Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Were Set Up for Different Conditions are Insufficient

43:00 Basics

45:48 What Do We Mean by Resilience?

46:17 Transformational Resilience

46:56 Policy Goals

48:20 How the ITRC Climate Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy Was Formed

50:18 One Summary

53:50 The ITRC Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resilience Policy

1:04:55 Community-Based Population-Level Mental Wellness and Resilience Initiatives Will Help with Many Adversities Beyond Climate Change

1:05:45 Legislative Actions

1:11:41 Summary

1:12:42 Q&A/Discussion