Nearly 40 p.c of teenybopper women attending excessive faculties round Chicago are experiencing indicators of post-traumatic stress dysfunction or different trauma-related misery, preliminary information from a brand new examine exhibits.
What’s extra, about one in 4 of the 1,500 low-income college students surveyed confirmed indicators of melancholy and nervousness, the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs discovered.
Students surveyed additionally skilled at the least two traumatic occasions on common, together with being robbed or attacked or witnessing an assault. But the stats are seemingly worse as a result of these numbers don’t embrace incidents of intercourse abuse or assault or types of home violence.
“Young girls internalize a lot of these stresses that is happening in their life,” Gail Day, program director of Working on Womanhood, mentioned. “That is why a lot of them are suffering in silence because they feel there is no safe place to talk about it.”
But Day’s program presents some hope in serving to younger ladies work via their nervousness, melancholy or PTSD signs, the UChicago examine discovered.
Founded in 2011, this system is now serving extra 2,000 college students in 40 Chicago Public Schools. Most are African American (61%) or Hispanic women (34%).
The two-year curriculum targets women and younger ladies at high-risk for publicity to trauma and consists of college students with suicidal ideas, emotions of hopelessness or being alone, amongst different danger components. Counselors meet with as much as a dozen college students each week in a classroom that’s thought of a protected house “free from stigma and judgement,” this system says.
Students in Working on Womanhood participate in workouts designed to spice up self-awareness, emotional intelligence, wholesome relationships, aim setting and management. Provided/Youth Guidance
The examine examined this system’s through the first a number of months of a rollout in 10 further CPS excessive faculties this tutorial yr. Most have been positioned on the South and West Sides and included Morgan Park High School, Curie Metropolitan High School and North-Grand High School.
There was a 22% lower within the variety of college students experiencing PTSD signs after six months, the examine discovered. There was a 20% lower in how a lot these PTSD-related signs impacted the lives of the scholars.
Anxiety and melancholy within the college students additionally dropped by 9%.
“The heart of Working on Womanhood is that it offers young women a stepping stone,” Day mentioned. “Stepping stones in rewriting their narrative, becoming more resilient and then as a result truly becoming empowered.”
Youth Guidance’s Working on Womanhood alumna Monique Harvey (middle) speaks about her expertise in this system and the way it has helped her excel in class.Youth Guidance Able to soar
Monique Harvey, 21, says she was reworked by this system. Harvey — who grew up in South Shore — is at present a pupil at Columbia College and believes she wouldn’t be the place she is at the moment if it wasn’t for Working on Womanhood.
“I thought of myself as a baby bird with broken wings trying to fly without guidance,” Harvey mentioned of herself when she first began this system.
She was homeless whereas in highschool and mentioned this system not solely helped her discover a place to stay but in addition helped her discover herself emotionally.
“Now I see myself as a bird with scarred wings, still healing, but being able to soar because of my circle of support,” Harvey mentioned.
Working on Womanhood is an initiative by Youth Guidance, which has labored in CPS since 1969. Youth Guidance runs Becoming a Man, which has acquired nationwide consideration for its work with boys. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel lately gave this system $200,000 from his marketing campaign funds.
“We know if we do this right, we save and transform lives,” Michelle Adler Morrison, CEO of Youth Guidance, mentioned.
The full report on Working on Womanhood is anticipated to be launched…