Exploring Healing Journeys: Insights from a Recent Survey of Trauma Healing and Coping
By Brandon Martinez, Research Associate
In East Harlem, the Center for Trauma Innovation is helping participants heal from trauma and cope with challenges. A recent survey highlights how impacts vary across gender and racial identity, and how time plays an important role in healing journeys.
Trauma-informed care requires providers to understand how their services impact participants’ healing journeys. Doing so allows programs to better adapt their approaches and tailor their services to the unique needs and goals of each person.
The Exodus Center for Trauma Innovation (CTI) in East Harlem was created in 2017 to address trauma experienced by individuals and communities impacted by the criminal legal system. This is done through a range of trauma-informed healing services—from clinical services, such as individual counseling and group therapy, to nonclinical programming, such as art classes, karate, and open mics. Ultimately, these services aim to support participants’ healing and trauma resolution process, successful community reentry, and post-traumatic growth and resilience.
Using a collaborative approach, the evaluation team at the Center for Complex Trauma at Icahn School of Medicine (CCT) partnered the CTI to gauge its impact. Together, they created a survey—designed to be accessible to all of CTI’s participants—focused on understanding three key factors of their healing journeys:
Does participation in the CTI encourage healing from past trauma and better coping with new challenges?
Do impacts vary across social groups?
How is participation in the program evident in participants’ lives?
Based on their knowledge of CTI participants and the individual, social, and systemic factors that impact their healing journeys, the evaluation team included specific questions to gauge improvements in different aspects of life, such as education, employment, and relationships. Findings from the survey were shared in a recently published evaluation memo, funded by CUNY ISLG and the Manhattan DA’s Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII). The memo details how duration of program participation and individual participant characteristics impact the extent of positive and desired program outcomes.¹
For more information about CCT’s ongoing evaluation of the CTI, visit the CTI Evaluation page.
Participants Feel that Their Healing and Coping has Improved
Overwhelmingly, survey respondents feel that participating in the CTI has led to improvements in their healing journeys. Nearly all participants (93 percent) reported positive changes in their ability to cope with challenges, while 84 percent feel that they are healing from trauma they have experienced. These findings show that the CTI's programming has successfully enhanced participants' healing journeys—providing support for both their coping skills and trauma healing.
Figure 1. Self-Reported Coping and Healing
Healing and Coping are more Widespread over Time
Figure 2. Positive Changes in Coping and Healing by Dosage
The impact of CTI’s trauma-based approach to providing services and supporting participants is also evident over time. Compared to short-term participants, a higher percentage of individuals who participated in the program for longer than three months reported improvements in both coping with challenges and healing from trauma. Even so, the majority of those who participated for three months or fewer reported positive changes in healing and coping. Because CTI offers a flexible approach and allows participants to choose when they participate and for how long, participants with varying needs can engage in whatever capacity is most beneficial to their healing journeys.
Healing and Coping Vary Across Social Groups
The survey also revealed that positive improvements in healing and coping varied across gender and racial/ethnic groups. Notably, men reported slightly higher rates of improvements for both healing and coping—a finding that is further discussed in the memo. Across race/ethnicity, although most groups reported similar improvement levels in healing and coping, the biggest disparity was among Black/African American participants, who were substantially less likely to report improvements in healing compared to improvements in coping. These patterns suggest that racial/ethnic identity may play a role in how healing is understood and expressed, underlying the need for tailored programming.
Figure 3. Positive Changes in Coping and Healing by Gender
Figure 4. Positive Changes in Coping and Healing by Race/Ethnicity
Participation Has Material and Social Benefits
In addition to the improvements in healing and coping, CTI participants feel that their lives were impacted in other meaningful ways—highlighting the wide-ranging ways healing journeys can happen. More than half of the survey participants reported improvements in their physical health, mental health, community relations, spirituality, and relationships with family and friends.
Figure 5. Percent Participants Reporting Improvements in Ways of Healing
These findings clearly demonstrate the positive impact of the CTI's trauma-informed approach on participants' coping skills and trauma healing. Overall, a majority of survey respondents reported improvements in healing and coping—even across gender and racial/ethnic groups – and their improvements were more pronounced the longer they participated in the program. Moreover, participation in the CTI has also improved respondents social and material lives; this benefit extends beyond themselves and to their family, friends, and community. To learn more about how these results were shaped by program participation duration and perceptions of healing, view the entire brief here.
ABOUT THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE INVESTMENT INITIATIVE
Under former Manhattan District Attorney Cy R. Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office created the Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII) in order to use $250 million seized in international financial crime prosecutions to invest in transformative projects that will improve public safety, prevent crime, and promote a fair and efficient justice system. CJII is a first-of-its-kind effort to support innovative community projects that fill critical gaps and needs in New York City’s criminal legal system infrastructure.
CJII focuses on three investment areas—crime prevention, diversion and reentry, and supports for survivors of crime. The CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance manages and provides technical assistance to CJII contractors, and conducts oversight and performance measurement throughout the lifetime of the initiative.
1. Figures shown represent findings from 85 CTI participants who completed the text- and email-based Outcomes Survey. Additional information about the survey sample is detailed in the Brief.
Image by max on Adobe Stock.