IPV is connected to other forms of violence and is related to serious health issues and economic consequences. However, IPV and other forms of violence can be prevented. For more information about IPV definitions please see Intimate Partner Violence Surveillance: Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements, Version 2.0.
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How big is the problem?

IPV is common.  It affects millions of people in the United States each year. Data from CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) indicate: 

Reference: Fast Facts: Preventing Intimate Partner Violence |Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (n.d.). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/fastfact.html

Long-term effects, especially from chronic exposure to IPV, may include:

IPV has long-lasting, serious effects on a woman’s physical and mental health. For example, a study found that women were up to ten times more likely to report depression and seventeen times more likely to report anxiety if they were in violent relationships.  Because of this, it is important for women to understand what IPV looks like and what resources are available to someone experiencing IPV and looking for help.
References:
1. Marques, L. (n.d.). Intimate Partner Violence – What Is It and What Does It Look Like? Anxiety and Depression Association of America. https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/intimate-partner-violence-what-it-and-what-does
2. Effects. (2019, April 25). The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/intimate-partner-violence/effects

generally refers to the traumatic experiences that occur to children aged 0-6. Because infants' and young children's reactions may be different from older children's, and because they may not be able to verbalize their reactions to threatening or dangerous events, many people assume that young age protects children from the impact of traumatic experiences.
These traumas can be the result of

 intentional violence—such as child physical or sexual abuse, or 

domestic violence—or the result of natural disaster, accidents, or war. Young children also may experience traumatic stress in response to painful medical procedures or the 

sudden loss of a parent/caregiver.
How Early Childhood Trauma Is Unique

Traumatic events have a profound sensory impact on young children. Their sense of safety may be shattered by frightening visual stimuli, loud noises, violent movements, and other sensations associated with an unpredictable, frightening event. The frightening images tend to recur in the form of nightmares, new fears, and actions or play that reenact the event. Young children who experience trauma are at particular risk because their rapidly developing brains are very vulnerable. Early childhood trauma has been associated with reduced size of the brain cortex. This area is responsible for many complex functions including memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thinking, language, and consciousness. These changes may affect IQ and the ability to regulate emotions, and the child may become more fearful and may not feel as safe or as protected.
Symptoms and Behaviors
 Young children suffering from traumatic stress symptoms generally have difficulty regulating their behaviors and emotions. They may be clingy and fearful of new situations, easily frightened, difficult to console, and/or aggressive and impulsive. They may also have difficulty sleeping, lose recently acquired developmental skills, and show regression in functioning and behavior.
Protective Factors: Enhancing Resilience
The effects of traumatic experiences on young children are sobering, but not all children are affected in the same way, nor to the same degree. Research on resilience in children demonstrates that an essential protective factor is the reliable presence of a positive, caring, and protective parent or caregiver, who can help shield children against adverse experiences.
Screening and Assessment Within Multiple Systems
Due to the particular developmental risks associated with young children's traumatic experiences, it is essential that vulnerable children be identified as early as possible after the trauma. Many community resources—including health systems, Early Intervention programs, child welfare agencies, Head Start, child care programs, and early education systems—play an important role in identifying children, and in linking them and their families with services.
For example, both Head Start and Early Intervention intake protocols include questions about domestic violence in families. Other protocols may include targeted questions about accidents, loss of family members, and/or significant medical history. Most young children are seen at regular intervals by providers in the pediatric health care system, enabling repeated opportunities for identifying early childhood trauma.
Resource: https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types

In addition, complex trauma can:

Medical trauma is defined as a set of psychological and physiological responses to pain, injury, serious illness, medical procedures and frightening treatment experiences.¹

Medical trauma can be viewed as an acute onset of a disrupted physiological system in which the ongoing threat is internal (i.e., the body) and may be long-term or permanent (e.g., cancer treatment).² This differs from an external trauma (e.g., car accident) where once the event ends, the external threat ends.

See the full fact sheet for information on:

Medical trauma is emotional and physical responses to pain, injury, serious illness, medical procedures and frightening treatment experiences.

There are lots of different experiences related to illness, injury or medical treatment that can be difficult, uncomfortable or frightening.

See the full fact sheet for information on:

Mass violence. Victim Connect Resource Center. (2021, March 29). Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://victimconnect.org/learn/types-of-crime/mass-violence/ 

Observable reactions

Young Children

School Aged Children

Adolescents

These reactions include:

Although many children who have experienced sexual abuse show behavioral and emotional changes, many others do not. It is therefore critical to focus not only on detection, but on prevention and communication—by teaching children about body safety and healthy body boundaries, and by encouraging open communication about sexual matters

https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/sexual-abuse/effects

Working with students who are affected by trauma requires schools to assist in providing individual counseling services, safety and crisis planning, behavior plans, self-care plans to address triggers, and case management. Most of these services are not provided by the classroom teacher, yet the teacher is the person who spends the most time with trauma-affected students. A key way in which positive psychology adds to the trauma-informed strategies above is by empowering teachers in the classroom to help their students on a daily basis.

Here are five teaching techniques that you can use in your class, knowing that these approaches also assist your mainstream students.

1. Positive relationships. Trauma-affected students have more relationship challenges to navigate than most. These students can be dealing with harmful relationships at home and then come to school to manage relationships not only with their teachers but also with social workers, police officers, and clinicians—all while living out their daily lives.

It is critical that we help these students feel safe and trusting where possible, so they learn to develop social intelligence and seek out positive bonds with others. Teachers may be the only people who help these students learn what a healthy, supportive relationship feels like. Building relational trust involves simple teaching practices such as smiling, sharing parts of your life with your students, getting to know your students as individuals, and using yourself as a role model of a reliable and regulated adult.

2. Positive physical space. The physical layout and look of your classroom can be used to build positive emotions. Putting up positive visuals and quotes can inspire creative thinking and teamwork in your students. Increased natural light or soft lighting can enhance an open, warm, and relaxing environment.

Consider how the furniture and seating is arranged in your class. Is it helping students to feel safe and connected? You could also bring plants into the room or create a mindfulness corner, a dedicated space that students can visit when they need to regulate their stress response. The corner can include a bean bag, mindful coloring books, squeeze toys, noise-cancelling headphones, and more.

3. Positive priming. Following the research of Barbara Frederickson, you can use simple priming techniques to foster positive emotions such as contentment, pride, awe, and wonder in class.

Brain breaks are one helpful technique. The teachers who work with us have found that brain breaks are most effective when students reflect on the type of energy they need at that moment for learning: Escalating brain breaks build positive energy and emotions such as joy, happiness, and wonder (e.g., clapping games, thumb wars, laughter yoga, racing around the desk), while de-escalating brain breaks build calm emotions such as contentment and serenity, which help a student to feel safe and focused (e.g., silently tracing the movements of a partner, triangle breathing, playing music or repeating mantras, and body movements such as shoulder shrugging or pumping your toes inside your shoes).

You can also use positive primers to boost positive emotion when students first enter the classroom (such as by greeting them with the healthy touch of a handshake or a high five), during transitions (by turning transition routines into a silent game such as “follow the leader”), or during independent work breaks (by having students deliberately savor their accomplishment and share with a peer).

According to Fredrickson’s theory, helping your students build up their bank account of positive emotions over time changes their brain to help them learn more effectively, form better relationships, and become more resilient. Next time you are planning a lesson, think about how you can use positive primers throughout the learning experience.

4. Using character strengths. Teaching strengths in schools has been shown to increase achievement and well-being. All students, especially trauma-affected students, need opportunities to identify, recognize, practice, and use their character strengths, which include qualities like kindness, humor, creativity, and bravery.

Ways to help students learn about their own strengths and the strengths of others include strengths surveys (if their literacy skills allow), strengths cards, and strengths spotting exercises—like identifying strengths in their heroes or playing a secret agent game where they are invited to “spy” on a fellow student to identify the strengths of that student. To teach about particular strengths, you could focus on stories in English and Humanities curriculums where characters or historical figures displayed those strengths. Strengths can also be developed through performing arts, sports, and other co-curricula.

5. Building resilience. Sadly, you cannot always impact the life of a student outside of school, but you can teach resilience strategies that help a student affected by trauma to gain a better understanding of their situation and to counteract the negative messages of shame they often internalize.

Students can practice resilience skills through role plays that help them to act out skills such as setting boundaries and verbalizing their feelings, all while in the safety of a classroom. Literature, poetry, and song lyrics can help students identify examples of resilient thinking—for example, Ariana Grande’s song “No Tears Left to Cry” following the London terrorist attack at her concert. Analyzing the ways in which media figures, sports heroes, and other high-profile people explain their successes and failures showcases the difference between optimism and pessimism.

Teachers can also use moments in the learning process when students feel frustration or self-doubt to coach them on how to dispute their pessimism and automatic negative thinking (“I can’t do this”; “I’m dumb”) to make room for optimism and constructive thinking (“Maybe I’m tired and I need a break”; “I solved the problem last week and I can do it again”; “It takes me a little longer than others, but I’ve come a long way”). Learning resilience skills can provide an internal psychological buffer for students when they are outside of school, as well as providing empowering experiences at school.

Every teacher wants to positively impact the lives of their students. For students who are affected by trauma, the teacher plays an even more vital role. The introduction of positive psychology into the classroom has huge potential to change the trajectories of the lives of many of these young people by moving beyond repair to also inspire growth

Modality: 

Family, Group

PSB-CBT-S is a family-oriented, cognitive-behavioral, psychoeducational, and supportive treatment group designed to reduce or eliminate incidents of problematic sexual behavior.

Modality: 

Individual, Family

RRFT is an integrative approach to addressing the heterogeneous symptoms experienced by trauma-exposed adolescents. It targets a broad range of trauma-related psychopathology (e.g., PTSD, depression) and risk behaviors (substance use/abuse, risky sexual behavior, non-suicidal self injury).

Modality: 

Individual, Family, Group

TF-CBT is an evidence-based treatment for children and adolescents impacted by trauma and their parents or caregivers.

Asylum-Seeker. An individual who does not meet the legal definition of refugee, but who applies for asylum (or refugee) status after he/she is already present in the US or at a port of entry. Asylum applicants can have any (or no) immigration status when they apply. Asylum status can be granted by either a USCIS asylum officer or by an Immigration Judge within the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review. (Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act)

During displacement, refugee children often face many of the same types of traumatic events or hardships that they faced in their country of origin, as well as new experiences such as:

Adults need to be aware, and intervene early. As Dr Jim Henry says, trauma affects the amygdala in the brain (where our fight, flight, freeze triggers are). This changes the stress hormones in a student. If we don't work on alleviating this, the stress and trauma will continue to live and build in our students. 

All of these steps help students to form trusting relationships with their teachers, and help them to feel safe. Combined together in different ways, they help ease the student, and prevent them acting out in the ways listed in the "symptoms" section. 

Buyer-Perpetrated Trafficking:
Child is being trafficked but does not have an identified trafficker.  Instead, the buyer is directly exploiting the child’s vulnerabilities by offering money, food, and/or shelter in exchange for the sexual exploitation.

^{Source:
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. (2021). Child Sex Trafficking. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/trafficking}

Red flags or indicators should not be considered a checklist or an assessment tool. Rather, if observed they may be an opportunity to ask more questions.

Physical Indicators:

Assessment involves gathering in-depth information from the youth and family to obtain a holistic understanding of the youth in order to drive service planning and intervention. A holistic assessment may include: assessing youth and family safety, trafficking circumstances, immigration concerns, basic needs, strengths and resources, and mental health.

According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, traumatic grief is the culmination of emotional and physiological responses that people experience when exposed to traumatic events. A traumatic event is a frightening, dangerous, or violent event that poses a threat to a child’s life or bodily integrity. Witnessing a traumatic event that threatens life or physical security of a loved one can also be traumatic. This is particularly important for young children as their sense of safety depends on the perceived safety of their attachment figures.

Traumatic experiences can initiate strong emotions and physical reactions that can persist long after the event. Children may feel terror, helplessness, or fear, as well as physiological reactions such as heart pounding, vomiting, or loss of bowel or bladder control. Children who experience an inability to protect themselves or who lacked protection from others to avoid the consequences of the traumatic experience may also feel overwhelmed by the intensity of physical and emotional responses.

Peterson, S. (2018, November 5). About child trauma. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/about-child-trauma 

Wu, J. (2018, August 20). Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.nctsn.org/interventions/trauma-focused-cognitive-behavioral-therapy 

Wu, J. (2018, September 18). Trauma and grief component therapy for adolescents. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.nctsn.org/interventions/trauma-and-grief-component-therapy-adolescents