With mental health concerns at historic levels among young people, a Rutgers professor joins a national call to create context-driven approaches to grief counseling
Schools should be ideal places for children who have faced trauma to process their experiences. Yet too often, school systems lack the infrastructure or training to support their most vulnerable students, according to a Rutgers researcher who argues that investing in school-based trauma counseling would yield long-term societal benefits.
"Trauma-inducing events are going to keep happening," said Abigail Williams-Butler, a Rutgers assistant professor of social work and coauthor of a study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. "The question is what are we going to do about it? One solution is to invest in trauma, grief and loss counseling within school systems."
Several states are moving in this direction. New Jersey passed a law in 2024 requiring schools to include grief education in health classes, with similar efforts underway in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
A proposed California law was drafted by Cindy Liou, director of legal strategy at OneAmerica, and Babe Kawaii Bogue, an immigration lawyer and an assistant professor of social work at San José State University. As lead authors of the study, they drew upon their expertise in creating legislative bill AB2366 that would increase the availability of trauma, grief and loss counselors in school districts throughout California. Though stalled during the pandemic, the bill can be amended and reconsidered in any state or territory.
Yet these efforts represent a fraction of what's needed. Between 61% and 80% of adults report experiencing at least one adverse childhood experience - from abuse to neglect - before turning 18.
Reframing the Problem
In their study, Williams-Butler and Kawaii Bogue argue that addressing this crisis requires school districts to fundamentally reframe how they conceptualize and treat trauma and grief.
Most education systems focus on "adverse childhood experiences" - preventable, potentially traumatic events that carry lifelong negative impacts. These include abuse, violence, exposure to substance abuse or having an incarcerated parent. Research links adverse childhood experiences to low grades, high-risk behavior, chronic diseases, mental health problems and chemical dependence.
But the researchers contend that treating symptoms without understanding root causes ignores the circumstances in which traumatic events occur.
"To understand childhood trauma, grief and loss, we must consider the sociopolitical context in which trauma manifests," said Williams-Butler.
Their study examined how four sociopolitical issues - anti-Blackness, immigration, pandemics and natural disasters - contribute to childhood well-being and deepen disparities in mental health outcomes.
The authors provide evidence to support the need for trauma, grief and loss services to meet the needs of particularly vulnerable youth. For instance, recent studies reveal that immigrant children of color encounter unique and disparate forms of trauma in the United States, while federal immigration policies have historically favored white immigrants. Additionally, the authors noted Black American children disproportionately account for 47% of childhood victims of gun violence and are twice as likely as white children to have unmet mental health care needs.
Drawing on Kawaii-Bogue's experience as a trauma, grief and loss counselor in San Francisco Unified School District high schools and their review of existing research, the authors conclude that the nation's education systems remain poorly equipped to address the complexities of children's trauma, grief and loss challenges.
"Too often, children go back to school immediately after witnessing the death of a parent or sibling and don't have any way to process what they've experienced," Kawaii-Bogue said. "Unprocessed trauma and grief can lead to an array of mental and behavioral hardships throughout the life course. We must change that."
Explore more of the ways Rutgers research is shaping the future.
