Trauma-Screening Tool Sheds Light on Child Survivor’s Mental Health

Over the last couple of years, we’ve expanded our services to add advocacy and mental health to increase the wellbeing of children and families. In 2022, we further increased these services and implemented a screening tool to identify children’s trauma symptoms. 

Who is it for? 

The trauma screening – provided by the Otto Bremer Trust Center for Safe and Healthy Children – is administered to children who come to CornerHouse for a forensic interview after disclosing abuse. After their forensic interview, the child will meet with an advocate to complete the screening, which assesses for depression, anxiety, night terrors, suicidal ideation, and other possible symptoms. 

Results of the trauma-screening 

Since April, we have completed trauma screenings with 207 children. What we found is that half are experiencing severe or high symptoms of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide ideation. 40 children (30% of the total) needed suicide screenings. And 10% of those screened for suicide have been brought to the hospital for emergency intervention. 

Our response 

Without this screening, we wouldn’t know the extent to which children are suffering. But now we can act and escalate access to individual and group therapy. Children with the most severe mental health symptoms are being triaged to start immediate mental health treatment. 

2021 allowed us to increase the capacity of our mental health clinic through incredible philanthropic support from partners like the Sauer Family Foundation, the Mace Goldfarb Memorial Fund, the Medica Foundation, the Allina Foundation, and Finance of America Cares. This meant we were able to reach every child on our waiting list before implementing the trauma screening in 2022. The trauma screening has provided increased insight and understanding into our clients’ well-being, and allowed advocates to provide immediate support; however, it also means that our mental health clinic is experiencing a surge of referrals. Since April of 2022, our waiting list has spiked from 0 to 130 children waiting for individual or group therapy. 

Next steps 

Every child who experiences abuse deserves mental health treatment to process trauma and begin to heal, but we need a larger space to increase our availability and provide additional sessions.  

CornerHouse plans to do just that through its current capacity building campaign, which will provide child-centered, abundant, and functional space so we can serve every child who needs us.