During the summer of his senior year in high school, Adam Morris '05 woke up to find his house burning down around him. Fortunately, he and his family escaped uninjured before their home was engulfed in flames. As if that single event wasn't enough, later that year Adam was involved in a horrific car accident, but again was lucky to survive.
After these incidents, Morris discovered few resources available to parents who struggle to help their children cope with disaster-related traumatic experiences. "Traditionally, interventions for parents of children who have experienced disaster-related trauma are limited to pamphlets and handouts with anecdotal information and referral resources for individual treatment," said Morris, who believes even these sources are both limited and rarely tested in the real world. "Professionals give them to parents and hope for the best," he explains. Morris decided to develop and test a parent-training program to aid families whose children find difficulty coping after a traumatic disaster. His goal is to have the Red Cross adopt his program to create "a solid intervention" that will be available to all parents whose children are victims of a disaster.
| Summer Research 2004 |
Under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Psychology Tara McKee, Morris has spent the last year investigating the parenting of children who have experienced disaster-related trauma. "Adam came to me with a well-formed idea linking my interests in parent training with his interests in child trauma therapy," said McKee, who is also Morris' academic advisor and has taught him in Abnormal Psychology and Research and Assessment in Clinical Psychology. Last summer, he researched child trauma and parent training literatures and began working on a manual for a trauma-specific parent training program. He then followed that work during the school year with an independent study project, where he wrote a paper on his research, which will soon be submitted for publication. This summer, Morris is working with McKee on identifying assessment measures for the training program and recruiting and screening parents to find potential participants. McKee, a clinical psychologist, will run the program with Morris.
The parent training program that Morris is testing is a compilation of strategies used in parent training for behavior disorders and individual child treatment for trauma. Using well-established training programs as a model, this disaster-specific program has two phases. In the first phase, parents learn about the negative effects of a child's post-trauma stress reaction so the parents will be able to identify and recognize the symptoms their child exhibits. During the second phase, parents are taught the skills and techniques used by professionals to help children overcome the negative symptoms of post-disaster trauma, such as extreme anxiety or sleep disorders. The program helps parents become "mini-therapists," according to Morris, and he hopes that his work will "make (parents) more aware of what their kids are going through."
After gathering information about the children and parents before and after participation in the training program, Morris will complete his senior thesis by analyzing the data he collected to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of the program. Morris completing the pilot test of his program McKee says is, "an amazing accomplishment as an undergraduate student at a small liberal arts college." McKee knows that Morris' summer research, "will give (him) valuable experience not only with the scientific method, but also in working with clinical populations, which will make him an attractive candidate for graduate school."
Morris is a rising senior who is majoring in psychology. His work is being funded with a dean's Summer Research Grant. Morris sings in the Hamilton College Choir and College Hill Singers, volunteers for the Utica Tutorial and the Study Buddy Group and is a resident advisor. He also is also a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon and the Residence Hall Council.
-- by Jason Ruback '05
