Treating Grief and Trauma in Schools: Modifications for Middle School Youth

Most children experience a potentially traumatic event by the time they enter high school and death of a close loved one is the most commonly occurring potentially traumatic event of childhood. The Grief and Trauma Intervention for Children (GTI) is a brief, evidence-based school-based intervention for children ages 7-12 years with experiences of grief and trauma.

The purpose of the current paper was to describe developmental modifications of GTI for middle school youth, explore the effectiveness of GTI at addressing symptoms of grief and trauma, and explore youth satisfaction and goal attainment with the developmentally modified intervention.

This case series included seven middle school students in grades 6 through 8 in a Title 1 middle school. Modifications were implemented systematically according to developmental need. All students rated broad behavioral and emotional risk, trauma symptoms, and grief symptoms at pre- and post-intervention. Treatment satisfaction and goal attainment were rated at post-intervention for all students.

Several meaningful modifications were implemented with this group of students to increase intervention acceptability, including introducing media to explain concepts, offering choices for trauma narration, and modifying activities for more mature participants. Improvements were rated on measures of trauma and grief for five out of seven students. Treatment satisfaction and goal attainment were high among all participants. Fidelity to the intervention model was high.

Future researchers should enroll a larger, randomized sample to validate current research-to-practice findings.