Chicago Tribune illustration, with excerpts from school records documenting restraint incidents.
Schools Aren’t Supposed to Forcibly Restrain Children as Punishment. In Illinois, It Happened Repeatedly.
As Illinois moves to restrict the use of physical restraint in schools, records show the practice was often misused, leaving students and staff injured.
By Jennifer Smith Richards, Jodi S. Cohen and Lakeidra Chavis • Photography by Zbigniew Bzdak •November 22, 2019
The adults gathered in a hotel ballroom in Peoria — school employees, caregivers, health care workers — fell silent as their instructor, a muscled and tattooed mixed martial arts fighter, stared at them to demand attention.
Over five days of training, the participants would learn how to physically control children who pose a danger to themselves or others. But first, Zac Barry focused on what he views as the most important lesson.
“Choosing to use a restraint should be an extremely difficult decision,” he told the class. “Kids die in restraints.”
To Barry, a social worker who teaches a system called Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, the message is clear: Physically restraining a child is a deadly serious matter. It should be used in an emergency and at no other time.
“We do not do it to force compliance,” he told the class. “We’re not doing it to inflict pain or harm. We’re definitely not using it as punishment or discipline in any way, shape or form.”
But a Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois investigation shows that message often is lost.
An analysis of more than 15,000 physical restraints in 100 Illinois school districts from August 2017 to early December 2018 found that about a quarter of the interventions began without any documented safety reason. Instead, they often happened after a student was disrespectful, profane or not following rules. These instances violate a 20-year-old state law that allows children to be restrained at school only for safety reasons.
Records show that most of the children restrained had behavioral or intellectual disabilities.
The law defines physical restraint as holding a student or otherwise restricting the child’s movement. The student can be standing, seated or lying down. A brief hold intended to keep students safe or to escort them from one place to another is not considered a restraint. Illinois law prohibits the use of mechanical restraints, such as straps or handcuffs, in schools.
One girl in the Chicago suburbs who had spent five hours in a seclusion room was “taken to floor” after she refused to return to isolation after a bathroom break, according to records from the elementary school run by Proviso Area for Exceptional Children in Maywood.
“My back hurt,” she said, kicking her legs. “Y’all got me smashed to the floor.” She was restrained for 32 minutes as school workers waited for her to stop moving.
In 50,000 pages of school records reviewed by reporters, aides and teachers documented numerous injuries to the children they had restrained: Cuts on the students’ hands, scratches on necks and noses. Collarbones that hurt to touch. Knots on their heads and split lips. Sore ankles and wrists.
In at least two dozen incidents, schools called an ambulance for a child.
School employees got hurt, too, as they wrestled with flailing children who sometimes bit, hit or kicked while trying to get free.
On Nov. 19, ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune published “The Quiet Rooms,” an investigation into the practice of secluding students in small spaces. The next day, the Illinois State Board of Education took emergency action to prohibit the locked “isolated timeouts” previously allowed under state law.
Reporters also had begun to tell state officials about their findings on restraint, which schools often use in tandem with seclusion. Among those findings: Schools across the state were using prone restraints, in which students are held facedown on the floor, and some districts used them frequently.
Restraints in a prone position are particularly dangerous because they can cut off a child’s ability to breathe. Officials from the state Board of Education, which was not monitoring schools’ use of seclusion or restraint, said in an interview they did not know the extent to which Illinois children were being put in prone restraints. A board official noted it was not required by law to keep track.
The board, which put emergency restrictions in place on all restraints in the wake of “The Quiet Rooms,” is moving to ban prone restraints permanently.
“Under my watch, I cannot — I will not — allow it to continue,” state schools Superintendent Carmen Ayala said in an interview. Ayala, appointed in February, said she was “taken aback” to learn about the behavioral interventions schools were using, including seclusion and prone restraint. New rules require schools to report their use of seclusion or restraint within two days.
Many districts, including the Proviso special education cooperative, declined to discuss individual incidents but told reporters they follow the state law and strive to keep children safe.
The schools examined as part of this investigation likely represent a fraction of the number that actually used physical restraint in Illinois. The 100 school districts and special-education cooperatives included in the analysis were selected because they previously reported using seclusion to the federal government or because they exclusively served students with disabilities.
Many more districts — more than 280 — reported to the U.S. Department of Education that they had used physical restraint in the 2015-16 school year, the most recent data available. Even that number is likely an undercount, as the federal database relies on self-reporting from districts and is known to omit information.
Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune
Austin Kelly, 11, plays basketball in Charleston, Illinois, this fall. His family says seclusion and restraint are a routine part of his schooling at the Kansas Treatment and Learning Center.
Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune
Left: Jacob Lopez, 12, was physically restrained at school programs run by the SPEED Special Education Joint Agreement beginning in first grade. His family moved to Indiana in search of a new school. Right: Darla Knipe watches as her son Isaiah, then 9, rides a bike in May. Knipe pulled Isaiah out of his Danville school after he came home with a mark on his face from being restrained facedown on carpet.
For 11-year-old Austin Kelly, being restrained or secluded has been a routine part of his time at school, his family told reporters.
The school he attends, the Kansas Treatment and Learning Center in east-central Illinois, restrained students at least 171 times from August 2017 to early December of last year, records show. Officials from the Eastern Illinois Area Special Education district did not respond to requests for comment.
At his grandmother’s home in Ashmore this year, Austin and his brother were playfully chasing each other when, as they fell to the floor, Austin cried out: “I’m restraining you!”
“It’s just he thinks normal is … restraints,” said Austin’s mother, Spring Andrews. “His brother will do something to make him mad, and he’ll restrain him!”
Andrews said Austin, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, does not need to be restrained to calm down.
“They showed him that violence is OK. They showed him that putting hands on someone is OK,” she said. “It is not OK.”
Escalating Encounters
When school employees learn the techniques of physical restraint, they practice on other adults, moving in slow motion as they grip their arms from behind or take them to the ground. Everyone is a willing participant.
In reality, physically restraining a child can be an ugly encounter.
That becomes evident in reading the records that state law requires school workers to keep when they restrain a child. The documents often detail these incidents moment by moment, including what was said.
One incident last year in the Valley View School District southwest of Chicago began with employees taking away pencils that a boy had been using as drumsticks in class. He got upset, threw books and was taken to a seclusion room, where he stomped on a staff member’s foot. He then was restrained for 15 minutes as school workers tried to hold him still, and he complained he couldn’t breathe.
“You’re gonna get me dead,” he said as he begged to be let go. Valley View district officials did not respond to a request for comment.
At the Kansas Treatment and Learning Center, records show that workers scoffed when a boy told them his father had forbidden employees to restrain him. They then performed what’s known as a “takedown” and restrained him flat on his back on the floor. Workers also held him in a standing position and put him in seclusion.
The incident lasted five hours; workers took 14 pages of notes.
“Are we going to do this all day?” an aide asked the boy. “Are you ready to get up? Yes or no. You ready to sit against (the) back wall? Yes or no. Good choices.”
The same boy was restrained three times that day in November 2018, the last time so forcefully that school employees documented his cries of pain and noted that they gave him ice packs and used a wheelchair to take him to the bathroom because his knee was injured during the incident.
Students sometimes lash out — swearing, spitting, head-butting — during the encounters. One student at the A.E.R.O. Special Education Cooperative in Burbank, southwest of Chicago, was restrained last year after he dropped to the floor and began flailing his legs while being escorted to a timeout room.
Taken to the floor in a prone position, he yelled and swore at a staff member, saying, “I wanna punch you in the face you … bitch.”
Marks Left on Students, Staff Records kept by school workers document how both students and staff can be injured during physical restraints. Children often said they couldn’t breathe or were being hurt as adults gripped their limbs and applied body pressure.
SPEED Special Education Joint Agreement
Marks were visible on a girl's wrists after four school employees at SPEED Special Education Joint Agreement restrained her in a faceup position on the floor. She had tried to attack staff members, according to the incident report.
A.E.R.O. Special Education Cooperative
A child in a prone restraint at A.E.R.O. Special Education Cooperative, based in Burbank, coughed and said he was choking. School workers contacted a nurse by phone for advice.
West Aurora District 129
A student who was sent to the office at a West Aurora school was restrained after hitting school workers. The child left scratch marks on a staff member’s hand and arm.
Records also documented numerous incidents when school employees used physical restraint to address a serious safety concern: to stop children from harming themselves, keep them from running into busy parking lots or prevent them from punching classmates during an argument. School workers restrained one boy who tried to bite an employee; he then tried to choke another worker with her own sweatshirt strings during the restraint.
In interviews and records, aides, teachers and workers noted their multiple attempts to calm students and avoid restraint.
To disability advocacy groups, frequent physical restraint at school reflects a failure on the part of the staff. If educators regularly resort to an intervention meant for emergencies, they aren’t addressing the cause of students’ behavior, advocates argue.
“There are children who are restrained and/or secluded frequently, and then they go to a different school environment where it rarely happens at all. The only thing that’s changed is philosophy, the thinking, the awareness,” said Annie Acosta, director of fiscal and family support policy at The Arc, a Washington, D.C.-based disability rights organization. “When you think about it from (the staff’s) perspective, too, restraining kids is not a good day at work.”
About three dozen districts examined for this investigation had restrained children at least 100 times between August 2017 and December 2018. For some, it was many more.
In Mount Prospect, the Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization, or NSSEO, reported 2,078 incidents of physical restraint. The total for the Southern Will County Cooperative for Special Education in Joliet was 1,424. For the Northern Suburban Special Education District in Highland Park, or NSSED, 1,175.
State records show each of those entities enrolls fewer than 425 children.
None of them would provide detailed records that show what types of restraint were used, for how long or for what reasons. They released data only. An NSSED official declined to comment about the district’s large number of restraints, and the other two districts did not respond to requests for comment.
Unacceptable Reasons
The 1999 law governing restraint and seclusion in schools spelled out that safety was the only acceptable reason to restrain a child.
But over the 15-month period reporters analyzed, schools regularly did not document safety concerns before restraining students. On a single day in September 2018, for example, about two dozen restraints at schools throughout the state began for reasons other than safety.
At a program run by the School Association for Special Education in DuPage County, or SASED, employees used a seated restraint on a child who had run from staff in the hallway. He didn’t start kicking until school workers held his arms, documents show.
A student who refused to stay in one place was restrained in a La Grange Area Department of Special Education program. Staff noted the child yelled and screamed during the restraint.
And at Moye Elementary in the O’Fallon district near St. Louis, staff restrained a girl who was “being unsafe” doing handstands in the timeout room. The restraint lasted 10 minutes.
The SASED executive director declined to be interviewed for this story. The La Grange and O’Fallon districts did not respond to requests for comment.
The proposed update to the law announced this month specifies that restraint may be used only while there’s a “threat of imminent serious physical harm.” It also explicitly states reasons when restraint can’t be used: as discipline, punishment or retaliation, out of convenience for staff or to prevent property damage.
The new rules also say restraint must end immediately when the emergency ends or when students indicate they cannot breathe. Reporters found at least 30 incidents in which students said they could not breathe yet the restraint continued.
Of the 15,000 restraints analyzed by reporters, roughly 1,300 lasted 15 minutes or longer. About 260 went on for more than 30 minutes — with more than a quarter of those involving children being held faceup or facedown on the floor.
Some children had medical conditions that made restraint unsafe for them, but school staff physically restrained them anyway in apparent violation of state law, the investigation found.
Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune
State Schools Superintendent Carmen Ayala told the Illinois State Board of Education last month that the state previously “did not sufficiently regulate” schools’ use of isolated timeout and restraint. The state has temporarily banned the practice of secluding students in locked rooms and restricted the use of restraints.
In Urbana, workers held a boy facedown on the floor after he threatened to punch them. When they remembered he had asthma, they flipped him over on his back. He was restrained for 18 minutes. In the A.E.R.O. cooperative, the school nurse was called to monitor a boy for seizures while staff restrained him for 29 minutes after he tried to walk out of class.
An Urbana school district spokesman declined to comment on the prone restraint incident but wrote in a statement that the district previously complied with all state rules and will continue to do so as the rules change.
James Gunnell, executive director of A.E.R.O., declined to talk about the district or its approach to restraint. The district did provide a statement saying it was “committed to complying with all laws and regulations relating to time out and physical restraint, and the safety of our students is paramount.”
Three other districts — Proviso special education, SASED and NSSED — provided statements that echoed A.E.R.O.’s almost word for word.
The new rules would ban the use of prone restraint entirely and strictly limit the use of supine restraint, in which the student is restrained faceup.
Superintendent Ayala and other top state education officials said prone restraint was too dangerous to continue to use in schools in part because of the impulse to “pin” kids to the floor.
Restraints that can obstruct breathing, including prone restraints, are prohibited in 31 states for all children and in a handful more just for students with disabilities. Last month, three California school workers were charged with involuntary manslaughter after the death of a student with autism who had been restrained prone.
Reporters’ analysis of school records found that “floor restraints” — both prone and supine — were used in about two dozen of the 100 districts analyzed. Together, districts used these restraints nearly 1,800 times in the 15-month period examined.
Thirteen-hundred of those floor restraints were in the prone position, and three districts accounted for the majority of those incidents. A.E.R.O. used prone restraint 530 times in 15 months; the Southwest Cook County Cooperative Association for Special Education, more than 300 times. Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 logged more than 200 prone restraints.
Plainfield school officials said they have stopped using prone and seated restraints since ISBE announced its proposed changes. They said students are restrained only when there is an “imminent danger of harming themselves or someone else.” Southwest Cook officials declined to comment.
Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune. Document: Provided by family.
Top: On what would be his last day at Middlefork School in Danville, Isaiah Knipe, now 10, was restrained on carpet in a prone position and got a rug burn on his cheek. Bottom: This document describes the incident. Prone restraint on soft surfaces is considered dangerous because of the increased risk of asphyxiation.
In May, 9-year-old Isaiah Knipe was put in a prone restraint on a carpeted floor for throwing a chair soon after he arrived at Middlefork School in Danville, according to records and his family. When he came home on the school bus, his mother saw a rug burn on his left cheekbone.
A reporter asked Isaiah what happened. He said he got the mark because “the floor was hairy.”
“It been hurting for a while but not now,” he said.
The district restrained students 138 times during the 15 months reporters analyzed.
Kristin Dunker, director of the Vermilion Association for Special Education, which includes Middlefork, said she looked into the incident involving Isaiah and did not find the staff member at fault.
“Unfortunately, it just happened,” Dunker said. “When you put your hands on a student, there is a chance for injury. … It is dangerous, and that is why we try not to put our hands on kids.”
Pleas for Relief Notes kept by school workers describe children struggling with adults while being restrained. Many of the students swear, cry out and beg to be let up.
A.E.R.O. Special Education Cooperative
Staff members restrained a male student after he became upset at being asked to work and tried to hit them. The student objected to being placed in a prone position because of his bruises.
Eastern Illinois Area Special Education
A sixth grade boy at Fresh Start Treatment and Learning Center in Effingham refused to walk to the school’s seclusion room and was restrained on the floor. He told school employees they were hurting his hand.
Proviso Area for Exceptional Children
After getting upset because his mom didn’t bring his lunch, an elementary student “became combative” and was restrained. He swore at staff, cried and said he couldn’t breathe during the restraint.
Training Lessons Lost
In its five-day training course in Peoria, Therapeutic Crisis Intervention didn’t teach restraint until day three.
For two full days, attendees practiced what to say to angry students, how to give them space instead of moving closer, how to demonstrate calm and support without placing a hand on the child.
TCI, which was originally developed at Cornell University for use in residential child care facilities, allowed a reporter to participate in the March session.
Barry, the trainer, knows what it’s like to have to decide quickly whether to restrain a child. He worked with challenging kids in residential facilities.
The goal of crisis training, he told his class, is not to arm adults with weapons but to help children. Too often, he said, “totally unnecessary” restraints are used because adults insist on forcing children to comply with instructions.
“The price of tranquility should never be death,” he said.
Menta Method
Workers at some Illinois schools have been trained in the Menta Method, which includes prone restraint techniques. Menta says it has suspended the use of floor restraints pending final changes to state rules.
Current Illinois law requires that school workers who use physical restraint be trained at least once every two years; it also mandates that they be taught alternatives to restraint, including de-escalation techniques.
The proposed new rules would require at least eight hours of training each year. They also would expand the training to include trauma-informed and restorative practices, behavior management and ways to spot students in distress during a restraint or timeout.
Most schools send delegates to formal training; these workers then return to teach the material to their colleagues.
Records and interviews show the training sometimes is condensed and key points are lost. Five days of training might be reduced to a two- or three-day session when taught back in schools, according to training records obtained from districts through the Freedom of Information Act.
That means employees often know how to restrain children but may not be fully equipped to manage situations so restraint isn’t needed.
At the Special Education District of Lake County, records show, staff members initially get eight hours of training from the Crisis Prevention Institute, or CPI. Refresher training in subsequent years lasts four hours.
In describing the training, a teacher at one of the SEDOL schools, Gages Lake, told a reporter that “more is focused on how to hold a kid and less about de-escalation.”
CPI instruction is used in clinical settings and correctional facilities as well as schools. A typical school training includes learning how to calm an upset child verbally, how to safely break free from a child who is biting or pulling hair and how to perform standing and sitting restraints.
CPI, based in Milwaukee, teaches the restraint method used by many Illinois schools.
Executives from the firm are aware the company’s name has become synonymous with restraint; school workers often refer to restraining children as having “CPI’d” them.
The executives say they want trainees to focus on how to ease tense situations without physical intervention. Seven of the 10 units that make up CPI teaching are about prevention and de-escalation.
“Schools that focus on restraint are ignoring the core of CPI, which is de-escalation,” said CPI Vice President AlGene P. Caraulia.
The CPI and TCI systems typically do not teach prone restraint for schools. Records from school districts that use those systems show they sometimes mix in other training methods that do.
The Menta Method, used in some Illinois schools, teaches that staff should take children from a standing position to seated to facedown, or prone, if necessary. But if the state bans prone restraint, teaching that “descent” to the floor wouldn’t be acceptable anymore.
“Since ISBE originally adopted emergency rules, Menta has suspended all use of floor restraints,” a public relations firm said in a statement on behalf of Menta. “Menta will develop a new, comprehensive staff training program to align with ISBE’s final rules that are expected sometime in April.”
No training is ultimately effective if it isn’t applied, though.
Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune
The Kansas Treatment and Learning Center near Charleston enrolls students with emotional and behavioral difficulties.
Pat Tingley, a former aide at the Kansas Treatment and Learning Center, said he went through in-depth TCI training on de-escalation and restraint. But back at school, he said, staff members got impatient with children and turned quickly to restraint.
“It went straight from 1 to 100,” he said.
“I was given the tools to do things correctly in training, but once the school bell rang that was out the door,” Tingley said. Then, he clarified. “It is not that the training went out the door. The restraint training was still in use.”
Tingley said he resigned last fall after working at the school for two months. The “last straw,” he said, was seeing a young child being restrained on the ground by five adults as the boy cried and gasped for air in one of the school’s seclusion rooms.
“I couldn’t handle seeing that,” Tingley said. “He was a very good kid always. He had a bad day.”
Bear Hugs
For years, Jacob Lopez’s family worried that his school was restraining him too often, instead of trying other ways to manage his behavior.
Jacob, who has autism and ADHD, had transferred as a first grader to a special education program run by SPEED Special Education Joint Agreement District 802 in Chicago Heights, south of Chicago. For the next five years, Jacob was repeatedly restrained by workers in different SPEED programs, according to records provided by his family.
Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune. Document: Provided by family
Top: Jacob Lopez, who has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, now attends school in Dyer, Indiana. Bottom: In this 2013 report, employees with the SPEED Special Education Joint Agreement wrote that Jacob Lopez was put in a “bear hug” restraint after he refused to sit and kicked furniture.
His mother, Kristina Soczyk, didn’t understand it.
“If I don’t have to restrain him, why do you have to restrain him?” Soczyk said she asked the school. “I don’t have to put my hands on him. He’s tiny.”
In all, records show, the cooperative restrained children more than 400 times, including in the prone position, over the 15-month period reporters examined.
When Jacob was 6 years old, in 2013, SPEED staff documented restraining him after he kicked his desk and kicked over a chair.
Jacob’s restraint that day and others were described in the documents as putting him in a “bear hug.” His family said he was restrained on the floor and would come home with marks on his arms.
In October 2016, records show, Jacob’s grandmother called the school with concerns about “another injury” to Jacob and asked to revoke the family’s consent to restrain him. She said she worried about the staff’s ability to “safely manage students.”
Soon afterward, Jacob’s mother and grandmother met with school officials, records show.
School notes from the meeting state that “Ms. Soczyk feels that Jacob is having panic attacks because the restraint is being completed in a painful way.” The notes also say “Jacob is blind in his (left) eye and he feels blindsided if he cannot see how he is being restrained.”
SPEED Superintendent Tina Halliman declined to comment about Jacob, citing student confidentiality, but wrote in a statement that the district “complies with all state and federal laws, rules and regulations.”
In spring 2017, an updated behavior plan for Jacob, agreed to by his family, allowed him to be restrained when there were safety concerns and other methods didn’t work.
When his family thought Jacob still was being restrained too often, they moved to Will County. But that didn’t help either. His mother learned that the school district there also sent children with special needs to SPEED programs.
In the end, the family’s solution was to leave Illinois. Soczyk said Jacob, who is now 12, is doing “amazing” in a school in Dyer, Indiana, where he attended his first school dance. His mother said she feels his behavior is being managed appropriately.
They live not more than a mile across the Illinois-Indiana border.
“It is the only reason we moved,” Soczyk said.
Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune
Kristina Soczyk moved with her son, Jacob Lopez, from Illinois to Dyer, Indiana, in search of a school that would not frequently physically restrain him.
Jennifer Smith Richards is a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, where she specializes in data analysis. She previously covered schools and education for more than a decade at newspapers around the country. Contact Jennifer by email and on Twitter.
Additional data analysis by Haru Coryne and data reporting by Kaarin Tisue, Nicole Stock, Brenda Medina and David Eads; additional research by Doris Burke.
Jodi S. Cohen is a reporter for ProPublica Illinois, where she has revealed misconduct in a psychiatric research study at the University of Illinois at Chicago, exposed a college financial aid scam and uncovered flaws in the Chicago Police Department’s disciplinary system. Previously, Jodi worked at the Chicago Tribune for 14 years, where she covered higher education and helped expose a secret admissions system at the University of Illinois, among other investigations.
Jennifer Smith Richards
Reporter - Chicago Tribune
Jennifer Smith Richards has been a data reporter at the Chicago Tribune since 2015. Smith Richards previously covered schools and education for more than a decade at newspapers in Huntington, West Virginia; Utica, New York; Savannah, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio. Her work has touched on everything from sexual abuse in schools to police accountability to school choice.
Lakeidra Chavis
Reporting Fellow - ProPublica Illinois
Lakeidra Chavis was the 2019 reporting fellow for ProPublica Illinois and is now a reporter at The Trace. Previously, Lakeidra was a producer for WBEZ’s News Desk (Chicago Public Media), where she reported an in-depth piece on how Chicago’s black communities have been impacted by the opioid crisis.
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Experiencing trauma at some point in life is almost inevitable, overcoming it is not. This inspiring book identifies ten key ways to weather and bounce back from stress and trauma. Steven M. Southwick incorporates the latest scientific research and interviews with trauma survivors. This book provides a practical guide to building emotional, mental and physical resilience after trauma.
Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice
This book examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context. Chapter authors emphasize basic therapeutic skills such as empathic listening, instilling resilience, and creating meaning, in the service of empirically-supported, highly efficacious trauma interventions. Throughout, they focus on the real-life challenges that arise in typical therapy sessions to deepen our understanding and application of evidence based interventions.
While this book is intended for all clinical mental health professionals who work with trauma survivors it is also a phenomenal resource for those who seek to broaden their understanding of the way various approaches to understanding treatment of trauma.
The award-winning author and noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton offers a powerful critique of American militarism during the Vietnam War. Home from the War is recognized as the ultimate text for those working with Vietnam veterans, the book's insights have had enormous influence among psychologists and psychiatrists all over the world.
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
The Boston Globe called this book, "A powerful reminder not only of what happened, but of the monumental evil done by the particular human beings who were trained to heal and cure."
Based on arresting historical scholarship and personal interviews with Nazi and prisoner doctors, the book traces the inexorable logic leading from early Nazi sterilization and euthanasia of its own citizens to mass extermination of "racial undesirables."This extraordinary work combines research and analyzation to describe a seemingly contradictory phenomenon of doctors becoming agents of mass murder. With chilling literary power, Lifton describes the Nazi transmutation of values that allowed medical killing to be seen as a therapeutic healing of the body politic.
When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.
Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims & Trauma
More essential now than ever, Covering Violence connects journalistic practices to the rapidly expanding body of literature on trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and secondary traumatic stress, and pays close attention to current medical and political debates concerning victims' rights.
Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills is a story that points to a crisis facing international institutions and the media who seek to alleviate and report human suffering throughout the world. The goals of the editor are to tell the story of thousands of individuals dedicated to helping others; and to integrate issues of protection and care into all levels of planning, implementing and evaluating international intervention and action. The book identifies approaches that have proven useful and explores and suggests future directions.
The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence
Ervin Staub explores the psychological, cultural, and societal roots of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another: cultural and social patterns predisposing to violence, historical circumstances resulting in persistent life problems, and needs and modes of adaptation arising from the interaction of these influences.
Drawing on more than 30 years of criminal justice experience, author Susan Herman explains why justice for all requires more than holding offenders accountable it means addressing victims three basic needs: to be safe, to recover from the trauma of the crime, and regain control of their lives.
Arnold Isaacs, who spent the final years of the war in Vietnam as a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, describes his firsthand observations of the collapse of Cambodia and South Vietnam―from the 1973 Paris peace agreement to the American evacuation of Saigon and its aftermath―with heartbreaking detail, from the devastated battlefields and villages to the boats filled with terrified refugees.
Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles
This is the story of the Northern Ireland troubles told as never before. It is not concerned with the political bickering, but with the lives of those who have suffered and the deaths which have resulted from more than three decades of conflict
A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold through Arab-American Lives
The history of Arab settlement in the United States stretches back nearly as far as the history of America itself. For the first time, Alia Malek brings this history to life. In each of eleven spellbinding chapters, she inhabits the voice and life of one Arab American, at one time-stopping historical moment.
This book seeks to tell the life stories of the innocent men and women who have been needlessly swept up in the “war on terror.” As we approach the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, this collection of narratives gives voice to the people who have had their human rights violated here in the U.S. by post-9/11 policies and actions.
Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs/Los niños en un mundo de las pandillas
With profound empathy for a reality that is too easily defined and dismissed as repugnant, Unsettled/Desasosiego takes us on a visual journey into the lives of children deeply affected by civil war and gang violence.
Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future
Legal Lynching offers a succinct, accessible introduction to the debate over the death penalty's history and future, exposing a chilling frequency of legal error, systemic racial and economic discrimination, and pervasive government misconduct.
War Photographer is a documentary by Christian Frei about the photographer James Nachtwey. As well as telling the story of an iconic man in the field of war photography, the film addresses the broader scope of ideas common to all those involved in war journalism, as well as the issues that they cover.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
For the first time in the United States comes the tragic and profoundly important story of the legendary Canadian general who "watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.
Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur
In Blood and Soil, Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides.
Ophuls examines attitudes toward war in the Western media, and in the societies they inform. The 243-minute documentary interlaces stark realities of combat with mordantly hilarious references to Hollywood fantasy-versions of war, and includes over 50 interviews with some of the world’s leading journalists, commentators, historians, newscasters and many others.
An enthralling, deeply moving memoir from one of our foremost American war correspondents. Janine Di Giovanni has spent most of her career—more than twenty years—in war zones recording events on behalf of the voiceless. From Sarajevo to East Timor, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, she has been under siege and under fire.
Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)
Echoes of Violence is an award-winning collection of personal letters to friends from a foreign correspondent who is trying to understand what she witnessed during the iconic human disasters of our time--in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and New York City on September 11th, among many other places.
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life.
With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland tackles perhaps her most harrowing assignment to date: investigating the damage in her own mind and repairing her broken psyche. She begins to probe the depths of her illness, exploring our culture's history with PTSD, delving into the latest research by the country's top scientists and therapists, and spending time with veterans and their families.
Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide
This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values
In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld signed a memo that authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how this memo set the stage for divergence.
Shoah is Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary meditation on the Holocaust. Assembled from footage shot by the filmmaker during the 1970s and 1980s, it investigates the genocide at the level of experience: the geographical layout of the camps and the ghettos; the daily routines of imprisonment; the inexorable trauma of humiliation, punishment, extermination; and the fascinating insights of those who experienced these events first hand.
Humankind has struggled to make sense of human-upon-human violence. Edited by two of anthropology's most passionate voices on this subject, "Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology" is the only book of its kind available: a single volume exploration of social, literary, and philosophical theories of violence.
A gripping and insightful examination of the relationship between news-makers and news-watchers, looking at how images of war and tragedy are presented to us in the media and how we consume them
Guzmán focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship. Patricio Guzmán narrates the documentary himself and the documentary includes interviews and commentary from those affected and from astronomers and archeologists.
In his extraordinarily gripping and thought-provoking new book, Jeremy Bowen charts his progress from keen young novice whose first reaction to the sound of gunfire was to run towards it to the more circumspect veteran he is today
The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict
The Observer's chief foreign correspondent Peter Beaumont, takes us into the guts of modern conflict. He visits the bombed and abandoned home of Mullah Omar; discovers a deserted Al Qaeda camp where he finds documents describing a plan to attack London; talks to young bomb-throwers in a Rafah refugee camp. Unflinching and utterly gripping
France's leading sociologist shows how, far from reflecting the tastes of the majority, television, particularly television journalism, imposes ever-lower levels of political and social discourse on us all.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom.
Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World
MINDFULNESS reveals a set of simple yet powerful practices that you can incorporate into daily life to help break the cycle of anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and exhaustion. It promotes the kind of happiness and peace that gets into your bones. It seeps into everything you do and helps you meet the worst that life throws at you with new courage.
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well, the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in today’s world. By using the practices described within, you can learn to manage chronic pain resulting from illness and/or stress related disorders.
Slee: A Very Short Introduction, addresses the biological and psychological aspects of sleep, providing a basic understanding of what sleep is and how it is measured, a look at sleep through the human lifespan, and the causes and consequences of major sleep disorders.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.
This is a new edition of the world's leading textbook on journalism. Translated into more than a dozen languages, David Randall's handbook is an invaluable guide to the 'universals' of good journalistic practice for professional and trainee journalists worldwide.
Legends of People Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka
This provocative study of the political culture of nationalism in Sri Lanka and Australia - is one of the few genuinely comparative studies in anthropology and in taking up such an important question as nationalism it reminds us that truly relevant anthropology questions deep-seated cultural beliefs, including our own
Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain
Family Secrets offers a sweeping account of how shame--and the relationship between secrecy and openness--has changed over the last two centuries in Britain. Deborah Cohen uses detailed sketches of individual families as the basis for comparing different sorts of social stigma.
During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns were targeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened. Six hundred thousand German civilians died—a figure twice that of all American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans were left homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W. G. Sebald asks: Why?
The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan
Christina Lamb's evocative reporting brings to life the stories that no one else had written about: the abandoned victims of almost a quarter century of war. Her unique perspective on Afghanistan and deep passion for the people she writes about make this the definitive account of the tragic plight of a proud nation.
House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe
Christina Lamb's powerful narrative traces the history of the brutal civil war, independence, and the Mugabe years, all through the lives of two people on opposing sides. Although born within a few miles of each other, their experience growing up could not have been more different.
Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Failure in Afghanistan
Butcher & Bolt brilliantly brings to life the personalities involved in Afghanistan’s relationship with the world, chronicling the misunderstandings and missed opportunities that have so often led to war.
Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Jerusalem 1913 shows us a cosmopolitan city whose religious tolerance crumbled before the onset of Z ionism and its corresponding nationalism on both sides-a conflict that could have been resolved were it not for the onset of World War I. With extraordinary skill, Amy Dockser Marcus rewrites the story of one of the world's most indelible divides.
They Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq
Based on "Blood Brothers," the award-nominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a safe and secure neighborhood. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.
The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans
Aaron Glantz reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war and has been reporting on the plight of veterans ever since. The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou, and Civil Strife in Haiti
Kathie Klarreich's compelling memoir interweaves shattering political events with an intensely personal narrative about the Haitian musician Klarreich, who turns out to be as enthralling and complicated as the political events she covered.
In the tradition of Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood, Columbine is destined to be a classic. A close-up portrait of hatred, a community rendered helpless, and the police blunders and cover-ups, it is a compelling and utterly human portrait of two killers-an unforgettable cautionary tale for our times
Juvenile, photographer Joseph Rodríguez spent several years following several youths, from arrest, counseling, trial adjudication, and incarceration, to release, probation, house arrest, group homes, and the search for employment and meaning in their lives.
By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East Los Angeles gang warfare. This story is at times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.
Still Here, documents the ongoing expressions of hope, perseverance, and suffering in the still-devastated communities of New Orleans and Texas post hurricane Katrina. Rodríguez spent two years photographing and interviewing families and individuals who shared their daily struggles to rebuild their lives.
Breaking News, Breaking Down, Two journalists' emotional journey after 9/11 & Katrina - This program tells the hidden story of how traumatic news impacts the men and women who cover it. Mike Walter loved chasing the big story, but on one September morning, the biggest story of his career chased him down: a jet rained from the sky, piercing the Pentagon and shattering his emotional well being.
One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers
The debate about women and torture has, until recently, focused on women as victims of violence. The essays in One of the Guys challenge and examine the expectations placed on women while attempting to understand female perpetrators of abuse and torture in a broader context.
Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War
Tara McKelvey — the first U.S.journalist to speak with female prisoners from Abu Ghraib — traveled to the Middle East and across the United States to seek out victims and perpetrators. McKelvey tells how soldiers, acting in an atmosphere that encouraged abuse and sadism, were unleashed on a prison population of which the vast majority, according to army documents, were innocent civilians.
Gogo Mama : A Journey Into the Lives of Twelve African Women
This book is a journey across Africa, in all its complexity; from the townships of Johannesburg, to the back alleys of Zanzibar; from the frontline of the war in the Sudan, to the nightclubs of Cairo. It is a vivid, illuminating and often haunting composite picture of an extraordinary continent, in the words of the women who know it best.
Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America
This is the first anthology of its kind, bringing together outstanding practitioners of the muckraking tradition, from the Revolutionary era to the present day. Ranging from mainstream figures like Woodward and Bernstein to legendary iconoclasts such as I. F. Stone and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the dispatches in this collection combine the thrill of the chase after facts with a burning sense of outrage
Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice
This book examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context. Chapter authors emphasize basic therapeutic skills such as empathic listening, instilling resilience, and creating meaning, in the service of empirically-supported, highly efficacious trauma interventions.
Ari Goldman’s exploration of the emotional and spiritual aspects of spending a year in mourning for his father will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one, as he describes how this year affected him as a son, husband, father, and member of his community.
What began as a project to deepen his knowledge of the world’s sacred beliefs turned out to be an extraordinary journey of spiritual illumination, one in which Goldman reexamined his own faith as an Orthodox Jew and opened his mind to the great religions of the world. Written with warmth, humor, and penetrating clarity, The Search for God at Harvard is a book for anyone who has wrestled with the question of what it means to take religion seriously today.
Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today
In Being Jewish, Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent thoughts about an absorbing exploration of modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform character of the religion today.
This book is a collection of reflective crime pieces, often approaching the events from different angles, yet written by on-the spot observers and reporters. There is an emphasis on the victims, and as a result these stories are written with sensitivity and compassion rather than sensationalism.
Over twenty-five tales of grisly murders and suspicious killings are laid out for inspection, including the story of the Police Killers and tales of the seedy Melbourne underworld.
This fully revised and updated new edition of Smart Health Choices will provide you with the tools for assessing health advice, whether it comes from a specialist, general practitioner, naturopath, the media, the Internet, or a friend. It shows you how to take an active role in your health care, and to make the best decisions for you and your loved ones based on personal preferences and the best available evidence.
The Spanish-language version of the Dart Center's 40-page guide to help journalists, photojournalists and editors report on violence while protecting both victims and themselves.
9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks
This book comprehensively describes the psychological response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and, to a lesser degree, Washington DC. The impact of what happened on the local and US national population is considered through various epidemiological studies, as well as personal accounts from some of those more directly involved.
Filled with astonishing personal stories, conflict, and drama, Feet to the Fire gives readers the rare opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of this nation’s most powerful journalists and news executives and experience their highly stressful environments. With each new and revealing interview, Borjesson gathers devastating details from national security and intelligence reporters, White House journalists, Middle East experts, war correspondents, and others. Like pieces of a terrible puzzle, these conversations combine to provide a hair-raising view of the mechanisms by which the truth has been manufactured post 9/11.
Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss
Grounded in the latest research in the fields of trauma studies, literary biography, and the history of journalism, this study draws upon the lively and sometimes breathtaking accounts of popular writers such as Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Graham Greene, and Truman Capote, exploring the role that trauma has played in shaping their literary works. Underwood notes that the influence of traumatic experience upon journalistic literature is being reshaped by a number of factors, including news media trends, the advance of the Internet, the changing nature of the journalism profession, the proliferation of psychoactive drugs, and journalists' greater self-awareness of the impact of trauma in their work.
Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions
Daring to Feel is a bold, brave book. Jody Santos challenges the entrenched doctrine that journalists are neutral, dispassionate observers of 'fact.' Santos demonstrates how journalists themselves and society as a whole benefit from emotionally nuanced and emotionally engaged reporting. This is a beautifully written tribute to the passion of journalists and the heart-wrenching stories they cover.
The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War
In The Things They Cannot Say, award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites asks these difficult questions of eleven soldiers and marines, who—by sharing the truth about their wars—display a rare courage that transcends battlefield heroics. For each of these men, many of whom Sites first met while in Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth means something different. One struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love; another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man; yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him. Sites also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war—including his complicity in a murder—and the redemptive powers of storytelling that saved him from a self-destructive downward spiral.
Kevin Sites, the award-winning journalist, covered virtually every major global hot spot as the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo! News. Beginning his journey with the anarchic chaos of Somalia in September 2005 and ending with the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Sites talks with rebels and government troops, child soldiers and child brides, and features the people on every side, including those caught in the cross fire. His honest reporting helps destroy the myths of war by putting a human face on war's inhumanity.
Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War
Using his trademark immersive style, Kevin Sites uncovered surprising stories with unexpected truths. He swam in the Kunduz River with an infamous warlord named Nabi Gechi, who demonstrated both his fearsome killing skills as well as a genius for peaceful invention. Sites talked with ex-Taliban fighters, politicians, female cops, farmers, drug addicts, and diplomats, and patrolled with American and Afghan soldiers. In Swimming with Warlords he helps us to understand this kingdom of primitive beauty, dark mysteries, and savage violence, as well as the conflict that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives--and what we might expect tomorrow and in the years to come.
The Price They Paid is the stunning and dramatic true story of a legendary helicopter commander in Vietnam and the flight crews that followed him into the most intensive helicopter warfare ever—and how that brutal experience has changed their lives in the forty years since the war ended.
What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars
Most Americans are now familiar with PTSD and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict.
Collective Conviction: The Story of Disaster Action
Collective Conviction tells the story of Disaster Action, a small charity founded in 1991 by survivors and bereaved people from the disasters of the late 1980s, including Zeebrugge, King's Cross, Clapham, Lockerbie, Hillsborough and the Marchioness. The aims were to create a health and safety culture in which disasters were less likely to occur and to support others affected by similar events.
When Lynne O’Donnell met Pauline and Margaret in Iraq she could never have guessed the wealth of stories she’d discover. Over tea the two women tell Lynne of their lives in the country: each having married Iraqi men had then relocated from England more than thirty years before.
Trauma Reporting A Journalist's Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories
Trauma Reporting provides vital information on developing a healthy, professional and respectful relationship with those who choose to tell their stories during times of trauma, distress or grief.