Child Trauma Academy and Dr. Bruce Perry

Dr. Bruce Perry's work had lead to one of the most ambitious and comprehensive collection of materials and resources that you will find anywhere. It is a pleasure to introduce Dr. Perry and the resources of the Child Trauma Institute through the GEMMA Website.

I first learned of Dr. Perry's work when he was Executive Director of the CIVITAS Child Trauma Programs and Vice-Chairman for Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. I attended a Child Development Conference, where a colleage presented Dr. Perry's work on the effects of early trauma and brain development. I have followed his work since that time.

There is neither space nor time to describe how Dr. Perry has influenced my work with young children, through his writings and research on how early trauma can affect how the brain develops and a child's behaviour. His experiences and descriptions described exactly what I was experiencing with some of the children in our care at Daybreak Parent Child Centre. One particular concept was the absence of the "present" parent. Of course, I had experience this, but never put it into words or acknowledged it as a traumatic event for a child. He described situations where the child is in the physical presence of the parent, but that the parent is absent emotionally, often devoid of feeling and not able to engage in a reciprocal relationship. We know that the emotional well-being of the child is achieved through a healthy, reciprocal relationship with the caregiver. He went on to say that when a child lives in the presence of an emotional absent parent, this can be more traumatic for the child, than actually being physically separated from the parent. I thought back to 18 month old, Charlene, a little girl, I had observed in my office, sitting along the wall, herself devoid of expression, expecting nothing from either me or her mother. It was as though she were a stone or lump of clay. Her mother sat with her back to the little girl, talking about her own problems, in a boisterous tone, self-absorbing manner, not turning once to look at the child. Before this time, I had never thought of using the word, depressed to describe a toddler, but as I thought back on this situation, that was the best word I could come up with. It give me chills today, to think of Charlene, even though I have experienced this many, many times since then. This insight put me on a firm path of trying to understand the how things can turn out for infants and toddlers, if they do not get their needs for attachment, predictability and affection met in the first months and years of life.

To make a long story short, that was twenty years ago. Dr. Perry is now Provincial Medical Director in Children's Mental Health for the Alberta Mental Health Board. He is also the Senior Fellow of the Child Trauma Academy, a Houston-based organization dedicated to research and education on child maltreatment. This aspect of creating awareness through education will be the most interest to GEMMA members and Website users. The Child Trauma Academy has free online courses on bonding and attachment in Maltreated Children. They also list dozens of resources, video tapes, background papers and games, which can be used to create awareness of the role of society in working with traumatized children and the guiding principles in caring for these children.

The Child Trauma Academy is a collaboration of individuals and organizations working to improve the lives of high-risk children through service, research and education. However, this material also deals with normal development and outlines how to promote positive and pro-active practices in infant mental health at the family, community and government level. A set of these materials on how to help children develop core strengths which will help them be resilent and productive members of society also appear on the Scholastic Website.

Melba Rabinowitz, Chair
GEMMA, A Society for the Promotion of Infant Mental Health
Former Director, Daybreak Parent Child Centre
St. John's, Newfoundland

URL: http://www.ChildTraumaAcademy.org