University of Montana starts specialty trauma center for American Indian children

The University of Montana launched a $2.4 million national trauma center for American Indian children Thursday, with a speech from A. Kathryn Power, director of the Center for Mental Health Services in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

A grant to the UM School of Education from Power’s agency made the center possible.

Story by Mark Page
Montana Kaimin

“This center is one of only five national level awards and the only one that will work exclusively with American Indian and Alaska Native children,” Power said. “This makes the University of Montana a very unique recipient.”

Rick van den Pol, director of the UM Division of Educational Research and Service, secured the grant money for the school. This was a “white knuckle ride of competing for a national center,” he said.

The goal of the center is to train people who have close relations with children on reservations. These people can then help and treat children who have experienced a traumatic event such as domestic abuse or a natural disaster.

“The mission is to elevate the standard of care for children,” van den Pol said. “The money will generally involve training people in Indian Country.”

Power said the center is necessary to develop an understanding of how native cultures deal with mental health issues. She will be visiting the Rocky Boy’s and Blackfeet Reservations in the coming days.

“We do not know enough about that culture to know what works effectively,” Power said. “I’m really interested in seeing firsthand what some of their methods are.”

The new grant will expand UM’s current program for treating childhood trauma, making UM a national leader in this field.

Power’s department got the go-ahead from Congress in 2001 to start dealing with victims of trauma. They developed the national grant program based on this congressional decree.

“Whatever the trauma may have been, we needed to get smart about this,” Power said.

Power focuses this effort in children because this is where the roots of mental illness are, she said. Most individuals with a mental illness start to exhibit signs around the age of 14.

“It may take eight to 10 years before that individual is correctly diagnosed,” she said. “We don’t have good support systems that recognize these signs early.”

This may have been the problem in the case of Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the shootings at Virginia Tech, Power said.

“When you read about it and look at the way he was described, he seemed like the type of person who had experienced deep humiliation,” Power said. “Many people believed it was the media who were making this prognosis.”

Power said the University of Montana is uniquely poised to succeed in this field due to the close ties UM has with local reservations.

“What’s unique about this trauma center is we’re relying on their connections, their networks,” Power said.

http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.php/news/news_article/um_starts_specialty_trauma_center/