SITCAP-ART - Detailed Report

Education

• Provides empowerment, sense of safety and reduces anxiety.
• Identifies process and what to expect through use of structuring statements
• Provides a booklet, “A Trauma is Like No Other Experience” in the program component.

Debriefing Session: Each adolescent is scheduled for an individual, one-hour debriefing session prior to beginning the group process.

• Alleviates need for adolescents to reveal difficult details in the group setting.
• Normalizes adolescent’s experience.
• Provides an opportunity through the use of specific questions to redirect the adolescent’s understanding of the impact that this experience has had on their life and how this intervention process will help bring the adolescent relief from the trauma specific symptoms.

Focus on Themes, not Behavior

• Attempts to treat the sensory experiences of trauma that fuel and drive the adolescent’s behavior rather than treat the behavior itself.

Intervener as Witness vs. Clinician

• Must be involved in the adolescent’s telling of their experience by being curious about all that happened.
• Must be very concrete and literal in response to all the elements of the experience, its details and the visual representations provided by the adolescent.
• Must not analyze the adolescent.
• Must see how the victim now views himself and the world around him following the trauma.

Drawing/Sensory Component

• The experience of trauma is stored in implicit memory and is transcribed into iconic representations/visualizations.
• Iconic symbolization is the process of giving our experience a visual identity. Images are created to contain all the elements of that experience - what happened, our emotional reactions to it, the horror and terror of the experience.
• Drawings provide a representation of those “iconic” symbols that implicitly define what that experience was like for the adolescent, how that adolescent now views themselves and those around them.
• Drawing becomes a vehicle for communicating and externalizing what that experience was like.

Trauma Specific Questions and Details

• Trauma specific questions have been designed to help in the telling of the story and the provision of those details that allow intervener witnesses to better understand what the experience has been like for the adolescent.
• Details can provide a sense of control as well as sense of relief.
• Details also can provide information that helps to make sense out of what happened and may still be happening with the adolescent.

Cognitive Reframing

• Scripted in SITCAP-ART to insure that the victim is provided a “survivors” way of making sense of their trauma experiences.
• The goal is to help move participants from “victim thinking” to “survivor thinking” which leads to empowerment, choice, and active involvement in their own healing process and a renewed sense of safety and hope.

Parent Component

• Learning about trauma helps them to more adequately respond to the adolescent.
• Helps primary caregivers who themselves have been traumatized just by educating them about trauma.

SITCAP-ART is rated a "3 – Promising Research Evidence" on the Scientific Rating Scale based on the published, peer-reviewed research available. The practice must have at least one study utilizing some form of control (e.g., untreated group, placebo group, matched wait list) establishing the practice's benefit over the placebo, or found it to be comparable to or better than an appropriate comparison practice. For more information on the rating of a “3 – Promising Research Evidence,” please see the Scientific Rating Scale.

Steele, W., Raider, M. Jacobs, J., Storey, M. & Kuban, C. (in press). Structured Sensory Therapy (SITCAP-ART) for traumatized adjudicated adolescents in residential treatment. National Social Science Journal.

Type of Study: Randomized controlled trial
Number of participants: 20
Population:

Age Range: approximately 16
Race/Ethnicity: 85% Caucasian
Status (e.g., foster care, CW): Youth with multiple trauma experience identified by clinicians

Location/Institution: Ohio
Summary: (To include comparison groups, outcomes, measures, notable limitations) Youth were randomly assigned to receive therapy using SITCAP-ART, or to a wait-list control group. The youth were assessed at the beginning of the study using the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC-A), the Youth Self Report (YSR), and the Child and Adolescent Questionnaire (CAQ). Both the treatment and control groups completed these three measures again at the end of the intervention. Control group youth reported no significant changes in trauma symptoms and related behaviors over the time period covered by the study as measured by any of the three scales. Youth receiving SITCAP-ART showed significant improvement in all areas addressed by the TSCC-A, except Depression and Dissociation Fantasy. They also improved on all subscales of the CAQ and all subscales of the YSR, except Withdrawn/Depressed and Somatic Complaints. Limitations of the study are small sample, and lack of long-term follow-up.
Length of post-intervention follow-up: None

Steele, W. & Raider, M. (2001). Structured sensory interventions for children, adolescents and parents (SITCAP). New York, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

Jacobs, J. & Steele, W. (2007). Structured sensory intervention for traumatized children, adolescents and parents – At-risk adjudicated adolescent treatment program (SITCAP-ART). Grosse Pointe Woods, MI: TLC Institute.