Here are some resources that may be useful for mental health professionals and teachers dealing with the current coronavirus pandemic, and preparing to deal with the aftermath, when social distancing is lifted and people return to school and work. Below you will find a Powerpoint presentation created for school psychologists and teachers to help think through supporting children and families through the current period of social distancing, and to help school personnel begin to plan for the kind of mental health support children and families will need when school resumes. I have also added links to a few of my own papers that elaborate further on how to conceptualize healing spaces for children.
This is also a time of bereavement for very many families. These losses are greatly exacerbated by the absence of opportunity in many cases to say goodbye as loved ones pass away, and the lack of funerals, the lack of opportunities to sit shiva, and lack of opportunities to participate in any other rituals of social solidarity and mourning after the passing of a loved one. I offer some resources specific to dealing with bereavement, as well as some books and articles that mental health professionals may find useful in supporting people through bereavement, trauma, and loss.
Two papers that will offer more background, and some additional resources:
Please note that this page is a work in progress. I welcome suggestions of additional resources to make the page more useful to educators and clinicians.
Powerpoint presentation:
Notes for school personnel in responding to Covid-19 April 2020
On reopening after the pandemic – draft of a new paper for teachers and school personnel. Completed on 6/16/20 for publication in a Brazilian education journal
Enabling Teachers to Create Healing Spaces in Virtual and in Actual Classrooms, by Michael O’Loughlin & Kirkland Vaughans, June 2020\
Containing the Anxieties of Children, Parents and Families
from a Distance During the Coronavirus Pandemic
by Jordan Bate & Norka Malberg, 2020.
O’Loughlin, M. (2019). Engaging children in healing work. In M. Charles & J. Bellinson (Eds.), The importance of play in early childhood education: Building lives. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
O’Loughlin, M. (2013). The uses of psychoanalysis. In O’Loughlin, M. (Ed.). .). The uses of psychoanalysis in working with children’s emotional lives. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson.
First aid for children – Scholastic workbook
How a game with my daughter helped us cope with quarantine and the past, by Amy Herzog, NYT Magazine, 5/24/20
The phoenix [Short video]
Noam Chomsky on Covid-19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ASPTDg_3ADE
Therapy under lockdown [from The Guardian, 4/23/20]
Psychoanalyst Darian Leader on Covid-19
Julia Kristeva on existential solitude from European Journal of Psychoanalysis, 3/29/20.
Psychoanalysis, too, will never be the same, by Nestor Braunstein, 5/20
Supporting teachers emotionally
What Palliative Care Looks Like in a Pandemic by Jamieson Webster [NYRB, 4/24/20]
The risks of reopening by Erin Bromage, 5/6/20
Jamieson Webster on the front lines 5/4/20
Nancy McWilliams on teletherapy
McWilliams, N (2020). Teletherapy in a pandemic. [posted from Facebook with permission of Dr. McWilliams].
Here are two papers on the importance of self-care in working with trauma and bereavement by noted clinicians Yael Danieli and Nancy McWilliams:
Danieli, Y. (1996). Who takes care of the caretakers? The emotional consequences of working with children traumatized by war and communal violence. In R. Apfel & B. Simon (Eds.), Minefields in their hearts: The mental health of children in war and communal violence. New haven: Yale University Press.
McWilliams, N. (2005). Preserving our humanity as therapists.
Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 42(2), 139–151.
Coping with social distancing for psychiatric sufferers
Here are three essential books on trauma treatment:
Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery. New York: Basic Books
Garland, C. (1998). Understanding trauma: A psychoanalytical approach. London: Karnac.
van der Kolk, B. (2015). The body keeps the score. London: Penguin.
Additional resources on trauma and bereavement:
Cohen, J.& Mannarino, P. (2011). Supporting children with traumatic grief: What educators need to know. School Psychology International, 32, 2, 117-131.
Kristensen, P., Weisraeth, L., & , T. (2012). Bereavement and mental health after sudden and violent losses: A review. Psychiatry, 75, 1, 76-97.
Krugman, S. (1987).Trauma in the family: Perspectives on the intergenerational transmission of violence. In B. van der Kolk (Ed.), Psychological trauma. American Psychiatric Publishing.
Maltby, J. (2008). Consultation in schools: Helping staff and pupils with unresolved loss and mourning. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 34(1):83-100.
Schlesinger, N. (2014). Loss to Legacy: The Work of Mourning Early Parental Death. Psychoanalytic Social Work, 21, 75-89.
Trasnade, L. & Dreyer, B. (2020, April). Commentary: The pandemic will haunt today’s children forever, but we can help them now.
van der Kolk, B. & Kadish, W. (1987). Amnesia, dissociation, and the return of the repressed. In B. van der Kolk (Ed.), Psychological trauma. American Psychiatric Publishing.
Varvin, S. (2003). Extreme traumatization: Strategies for mental survival. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 12, 5-16.
Waisanen, E. (2004). Daddy. Journal of Loss and Trauma. 9, 291-298.
Weiss, D. (2006). Psychodynamic group treatment. In Psychological effects of catastrophic disasters: Group approaches to treatment, pp. 787-839.
Wortman, C., Carnelley, K., Lehman, D., Davis, C. & Exline, J. (1995).
Coping with the loss of a family member: Implications for community level research and intervention. Extreme Stress and Communities: Impact and intervention, pp. 83-103.