I Feel Better Now! Trauma Intervention Program - Detailed Report

Education

• Provides empowerment, sense of safety and reduces anxiety.
• Use of structuring statements to identify process and what to expect.
• Use of specific resource material, You Are Not Alone, provided to help normalize symptoms and reactions.

Debriefing Session

• Each adolescent is scheduled for an individual, one-hour debriefing session prior to beginning the group process.
• Alleviates the need for children to reveal difficult details in the group setting.
• Continued normalizing of symptoms and reactions.

Focus on Themes, Not Behaviors

• The process does not direct itself to attempting to treat behavior but rather the sensory experiences of trauma that fuel and drive the child’s behavior.

Intervener as Witness vs. Clinician

• Must be involved in the child’s telling of their experience by being curious about all that happened.
• Must be very concrete and literal in response to all the elements of the experience, its details and the visual representations provided by the child.
• Intervener must not analyze.
• Must see how the victim now views himself and the world around him following the trauma.

Drawing/Sensory Component

• The experience of trauma is stored in implicit memory and is transcribed into iconic representations/visualizations.
• Iconic symbolization is the process of giving our experiences a visual identify. Images are created to contain all the elements of that experience – what happened, our emotional reactions to it the horror and terror of the experience.
• Drawings provide representation of those “iconic” symbols that implicitly define what that experience is like for the child, how that child now views themselves and those around them.
• Drawing becomes a vehicle for communicating and externalizing what that experience was like.

Trauma Specific Questions and Details

• Trauma specific questions have been designed to help in the telling of the story and the provision of those details that allow intervener witnesses to better understand what the experience has been like for the adolescent.
• Details can provide a sense of control as well as sense of relief.
• Details also can provide information that helps to make sense out of what happened and may still be happening with the child.

Cognitive Reframing

• Scripted in I Feel Better Now to insure that the victim is provided a “survivors” way of making sense of their trauma experiences.
• The goal is to help move participants from “victim thinking” to “survivor thinking” which leads to empowerment, choice active involvement in their own healing process, and a renewed sense of safety and hope.

Parent Component

• Learning about trauma helps parents to more adequately respond to their child.
• Education helps parents who themselves have been traumatized.

I Feel Better Now! Trauma Intervention Program has been reviewed and it was determined that this program lacks the type of published, peer-reviewed research that meets the CEBC criteria for scientific rating of 1 – 5. Therefore, the program has been given the classification of "NR - Not able to be Rated. " It was reviewed because it was identified by the topic expert as a program being used in the field, or it is being marketed and/or used in California with children receiving services from child welfare or related systems and their parents/caregivers. Some programs that are not rated may have published, peer-reviewed research that does not meet the above stated criteria or may have eligible studies that have not yet been published in the peer-reviewed literature. For more information on the "NR – Not able to be Rated" classification, please see the Scientific Rating Scale.

Steele, W., Raider, M., & Kuban, C. (2009). Connections, Continuity, Dignity, Opportunities Model: Follow-up of children who completed the I Feel Better Now Trauma Intervention Program. School Social Work Journal. 33:2, 98-111.

Type of Study: Qualitative study of I Feel Better Now! Program participants
Number of participants: 27 children
Population:

Age Range: 10 years of age, on average
Race/Ethnicity: 86% Caucasian
Status (e.g., foster care, CW): At-risk, traumatized children 6-12 years old in four elementary schools.Location/Institution: Taylor, Michigan (a core metropolitan city near Detroit)
Summary: (To include comparison groups, outcomes, measures, notable limitations) Focus groups were completed with children who participated in a randomized controlled trial of I Feel Better Now! Program to distinguish those children who showed the greatest improvement and sustained gains after completion of the program, compared to children who demonstrated the least improvement. The children who saw and sustained the greatest gains had an overall greater percentage of resilience and posttraumatic growth (PTG) characteristics cited in the literature. The study indicates that those who had fewer gains would therefore benefit from further interventions focused on characteristics such as connections, continuity, dignity, and opportunities, and activities that support resilience and PTG.
Length of post-intervention follow-up: None

Steele, W., Lemerand, P., Ginns-Gruenberg, D. & Kuban, C. (2007). I Feel Better Now! Trauma Intervention Program. Grosse Pointe Woods, MI: TLC Institute.

Steele, W. & Raider, M. (2009 rev, 2001). Structured sensory interventions for traumatized children, adolescents and parents (SITCAP). New York, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.