School of Social and Political Science

Content

Resilience After Trauma: The Emerging Science of Dose

With Dr Sherry Hamby
22 September 2022

Scientists now recognize that the impact of trauma is best thought of in terms of dosage, with each subsequent trauma exposure adding to the harm, in part because of the biological impacts of exposure to chronic stress. Almost everyone is exposed to traumatic events (the pandemic has made this truer than ever), but this sad reality also means that resilience is far more common than we used to believe. There is extensive untapped wisdom about resilience, a concept that is frequently misunderstood, even in the scientific literature. The concept of dosage can transform our ideas about strengths and what we need to overcome trauma, just as it has revolutionised insights into the true burden of trauma too. Resilience refers to all the things we do—and all the resources we get from others—that help us overcome trauma. These individual, family, and community strengths can also be thought of in terms of dosage, countering dosages of trauma and ameliorating harm. There is a growing evidence base showing that building your resilience portfolio (across meaning making, regulatory, and interpersonal domains) can help people counter even large trauma dosages. Easily accessible tools, such as mindfulness, exercise, volunteering, committing to a cause, 'forest bathing' (spending time in natural environments), yoga, expressing gratitude, build our resilience portfolios and minimise the aftereffects of trauma. Psychologists used to treat resilient people like unicorn  - remarkable and rare. Now we know they are more like squirrels - they are everywhere!

Dr Sherry Hamby
Sherry Hamby, PhD, is Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at the University of the South and Director of the Life Paths Research Center. She is also the founder of ResilienceCon. Dr Hamby is an internationally recognised authority who is known for her work on trauma dosage and resilience. A clinical psychologist by training, Dr Hamby has worked for more than 25 years on the problem of violence, including front-line crisis intervention and treatment, involvement in grassroots organizations, and research leading to the publication of more than 200 articles and books. An influential researcher, she has been ranked in the top 1% among more than six million researchers in 22 disciplines based on citations to her work. Her awards include Outstanding Contributions to the Science of Trauma Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA). Dr Hamby’s work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, CBS News, Psychology Today, and hundreds of other media outlets. Her newest book, with Victoria Banyard, is Strengths-Based Prevention: Reducing Violence & Other Public Health Problems (APA Books, 2022). Check out her TEDx talk, Trauma is Everywhere, But So Is Resilience.

Adolescent Trauma, Resilience and Collective Empowerment

With Phil Frampton
19 October 2022

Youth and the Mystery Wall… and “Fine” as the perfected adolescent response to parents

Raised in orphanages, both University of California Professor Richard McKenzie and British author Phil Frampton have independently championed the potential benefits of collective residential settings for children in care. In his new book, Youth and the Mystery Wall (International Federation of Social Workers 2022), Frampton contends that, with levels of adolescent trauma experienced in modern civilisation not being replicated in other cultures, the primary causes should be sought within society’s contradictions (i.e. structurally) rather than in individuals’ character 'flaws'. From Ubuntu and the now oft-used phrase 'It takes a whole village to raise a child' he points to how the role of the village children in that process is overlooked. Frampton argues that the objectification of young people resulted in a neglect of studying children’s agency as individuals and collectives, viewing their input as unworthy, even infantile.

Maslow is alleged to have drawn directly from the North American Blackfoot tribe’s community-based hierarchy of needs to develop his celebrated but individualistic Hierarchy of Needs. Did he unwittingly contribute to this process of individualisation? Was Bowlby equally culpable when he overlooked the crucial role of siblings and peers in child development?

Frampton points to the critical importance that collective capability enhancement and empowerment play in developing adolescent identities, self esteem and resilience. Hence, he argues that the societal apprehensions, fears and sometime outright repression of adolescents’ collective agency leads to contradictions within families and isolation of the young person, triggering more intense trauma responses. Allowing the marketisation of education has accelerated this trend, further atomising adolescents.

He draws on the parallels between the historic oppression of women and British colonial oppression, pointing to similarities of experience, isolations and disempowerment. He contends that society needs to welcome young people’s collective empowerment and support and popularise efforts such as that of the Peruvian Child Workers’ Movement to enable adolescents’ social and political emancipation, lifting the pervading pall over modern childhood.

Phil Frampton
A business development and social care consultant, Phil Frampton was, in 2000, declared an Honorary Teaching Fellow at Birkbeck College for his work on football governance. In 2016 London Metropolitan University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate, citing his decade of lectures and writings on the care system. Phil was a select witness to the 2001 Parliamentary Inquiry into Police Investigations of Abuse in Children’s Homes, a Core Participant in the 2014-23 National Child Abuse Inquiry and short-listed in 2007 to sit on the OfSTED Board.

Phil founded the Careleavers Association, now entering its 19th year as a national charity. His memoir, The Golly in the Cupboard (Tamic, 2004), chronicled his growing up mixed race in the care system, and his BBC documentary of the same name won the prestigious 2005 Race in the Media Award.

Phil has written and broadcast on travel, racism, politics, travel, co-operatives, football governance and social care both in specialist journals and the nationals, ranging from the Daily Mail to the Guardian and the socialist press. In 2007 he presented his Bring Back Orphanages Channel 4 programme, featuring the progressive outputs of large German orphanages, and in 2012 he presented The Crying Shame BBC Radio documentary. The programme highlighted the persecution and cruelty directed at Britain’s unmarried mothers during the 1950s and received a commendation in the Gillick Awards.