Trauma Lingers for Those Who Have Experienced Seclusion and Restraint
Seclusion and restraint can hurt children, said Ross Greene, a clinical child psychologist who taught at Harvard Medical School for more than 20 years and wrote four books on behavioral challenges in kids.
The practices are especially harmful because they happen at the hands of adults whom children have been taught to trust. Some students will lose trust in authority figures altogether, Greene said, or lose their desire to attend school. Others experience residual anguish long after the ordeal ends.
“The kids I’ve worked with who were most affected by it are still affected by it, even though no one’s laid hands on them three or four years later,” said Greene, who now runs a nonprofit called Lives in the Balance and travels to schools, psychiatry units and detention facilities around the world to promote alternative disciplinary approaches. “A lot of people would say that meets the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.”