Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including trauma exposure, parent mental health problems, and family dysfunction, put children at risk for disrupted brain development and increased risk for later health problems and mortality. These negative effects may be prevented by resilience promoting environments that include protective caregiving relationships. We sought to understand (1) parents' experiences of ACEs, (2) the perceived impact on parenting, (3) protective factors that buffer ACEs potential negative impact, and (4) supports and services that can reduce the number and severity of ACEs and promote resilience among children exposed to early adversity. We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 11 low-income, urban parents of young children who had experienced ACEs. Interviews were analyzed for emergent themes and shared with parents from the community to ensure relevance and proper interpretation. Themes from these interviews describe the potential intergenerational cycle of ACEs and key factors that can break that cycle, including parent aspirations to make children's lives better and parent nurturance and support. Parents' suggestions for intervention are also presented. Our findings illuminate protective factors and family strengths that are important to build upon when developing and implementing interventions to promote resilience among parents and children exposed to early adversity. This study benefits from highly ecologically valid data obtained from low-socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic minority parents through one-on-one in-depth interviews and interpreted with the aid of community stakeholders through a community-based participatory research approach.
Positive psychology concepts and principles can be incorporated into preparedness, crisis response, and recovery phases of disaster mental health efforts to address the needs of children, adolescents, and families. This article articulates general developmental considerations for applying positive psychology in disaster mental health contexts and discusses how 5 essential elements of immediate and midterm mass trauma intervention identified by Hobfoll et al. (2007) may be infused in applications of positive psychology for children and adolescents. Specific strategies for working with children, adolescents, and their families in home, community, and school contexts are drawn in part from disaster mental health resources developed jointly by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, including the Psychological First Aid Field Operations Guide (Brymer et al., 2006), the Skills for Psychological Recovery Field Operations Guide (Berkowitz et al., 2010), and the Psychological First Aid for Schools Field Operations Manual (Brymer et al., 2012). Two case examples illustrate the use of positive psychology principles.
Social determinants of health, such as poverty, lower parental education, parental unemployment, and racism, are critical but often overlooked factors that contribute to racial inequities in mental health. The effects of social determinants on mental health persist despite positive intentions of individual professionals within psychology. A new approach is required to address mental health inequities by training psychologists to understand how power, privilege, and oppression relate to racial disparities in mental health. Currently, many psychology training programs do not provide instruction related to the social determinants of mental health. We advocate for a shift in the paradigm of psychology training programs to prepare psychologists to address social determinants of mental health. We present 2 approaches to support this shift in psychology training programs-cultural humility and community-based participatory research-and describe concrete examples of how these approaches can facilitate psychologists' active involvement in disrupting mental health inequities. Public Significance StatementGraduate training programs can prepare psychologists to reduce the prevalence of mental health disparities by incorporating strategies to address social determinants of mental health. Specifically, this article advocates for training psychologists in cultural humility and community-based participatory research and provides a few examples and recommendations for implementation.
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