Key Takeaways
- New Zealand schools are often ill-prepared to address trauma due to the strain on school counsellors and lack of support for frontline mental health workers.
- The weight of responsibility on principals after a traumatic event is enormous, and they need to prioritize empathy and support for affected families and students.
- Healing from trauma is a process with no fixed timeline, and support services may be needed months or even years after the event.
- Social media can exacerbate the challenges of responding to traumatic events, and school leaders need to be prepared for the rapid dissemination of information and potential misinformation.
- The mental health system’s long wait times and shortage of professionals can contribute to difficulties in helping schools recover from traumatic events.
Introduction to Trauma in New Zealand Schools
The University of Auckland research fellow, Ying Wang, has expressed concerns that schools throughout New Zealand are ill-prepared to address trauma due to the strain on school counsellors and lack of support for frontline mental health workers. A study conducted by Wang involved speaking to 29 professionals, including psychologists, school counsellors, social workers, and forensic doctors, who were working with young Asian people affected by sexual violence. The response Wang heard repeatedly was: "I don’t know how to deal with it." This lack of training and support can have severe consequences, as seen in the cases of traumatic events in New Zealand’s recent history.
The Weight of Responsibility on Principals
Principal Murray Burton knows the weight of responsibility that comes with responding to a traumatic event at a school. In 2008, he was left to grapple with the deaths of six of his students and a teacher after a canyoning trip on the Mangatepopo Stream in Tongariro National Park went tragically wrong. Burton still remembers the terror of the evening phone call from a police officer who told him, ‘at this stage I can tell you that you’ve definitely lost four, but you can’t tell anyone’. The protocol required the police officers at the scene to formally identify the bodies and travel to each household to deliver the news. That night, many of the families had already arrived at Elim Christian College in Auckland, and Burton was faced with the task of meeting anxious parents whose children he already knew were dead.
The Emotional Toll of Trauma
When a young person dies or is hurt in a school setting, anger is also an emotion that can rise quickly to the surface for parents. In the Abbey Caves tragedy in 2023, schoolboy Karnin Petera, 16, died in a swirling current that swept through the network of caves in Whangārei, while the rest of the students managed to escape. At a sentencing in the Whangārei District Court, his parents expressed frustration at the school’s handling of the tragedy and the fact they had made repeated phone calls to the school expressing concern over heavy rainfall. Following the event, Whangārei Boys’ High School was ordered to pay more than half a million dollars to the victims, including Petera’s family. Burton said he observed during the years following the Mangatepopo canyoning tragedy the muted anger and many stages of grief the seven families of the victims went through – made harder by the drawn-out court process and follow-up investigations.
The Importance of Support Services
Practising psychologist Sehar Moughal says it is often assumed that therapy support for trauma is needed immediately after an event; however, trauma processing can be delayed or happen months or even years later. Moughal works with survivors of family and gendered violence and those with traumatic brain injuries (TBI). "People forget that it takes a while for a person to move away from the fight-or-flight response and it can take a long time for them to try to make sense of the traumatic experience," she says. "There might be short-term funding or support for a group of people or a community immediately after a traumatic event. But, let’s say six months down the line, that’s when the psychology and therapy services really need to be in place as well." Immediately after a traumatic event, the brain’s focus is on basic functioning for survival; people are not always ready for recall and reflection at that stage, she says.
The Challenges of Social Media
The long wait times and shortage of professionals within the mental health system could contribute to difficulties in helping schools recover from traumatic events. Wang says many of the professionals she spoke to felt powerless because they might be able to see a young person desperately in need of support only once a week or less, and it left professionals feeling lonely, overwhelmed, and frustrated by the system. Social media can exacerbate the challenges of responding to traumatic events, and school leaders need to be prepared for the rapid dissemination of information and potential misinformation. Burton believes that if the canyoning tragedy happened now, there would be videos popping up online from the kids that were at the camp, and the story would have unfolded exponentially faster. "I just shudder to think … it would have made the job a lot harder, I think. People would have been forming conclusions, making judgments. I think that’s one thing now for all school leaders, you’ve got to make the assumption that it will be out there before you know it. And therefore, you’re essentially running on the back foot."
Conclusion and Recommendations
Wang has found using art and visual expression are effective ways to communicate or process trauma. Burton says school leaders need to be absolutely resolute in the belief they are there first and foremost for people – and not for the institution’s reputation. "Whatever the trauma is or whatever the event is that produces the trauma, this is part of an unfolding story for your organisation that will always be there. You ignore it at your peril. Embrace it for the life of the community," he says. Coroner Tania Tetitaha called for a single, co-ordinated care pathway that ensures continuity of support, after an inquest into a tragic cluster of youth suicides in Northland. The coroner also noted the Ministry of Education should consider law reform to resolve the funding issue. By prioritizing support services, addressing the challenges of social media, and providing training and resources for school counsellors and mental health workers, schools can better respond to traumatic events and support affected families and students.
