Bounce Back

Bounce Back is an intervention to teach elementary school children exposed to stressful and traumatic events skills to help them cope with and recover from their traumatic experiences.

Administered by clinicians in schools, Bounce Back builds resilience to help children exposed to trauma bounce back to a quality level of functioning and well-being in their school and community. Children learn coping skills, how to identify their feelings, relaxation techniques, and problem solving strategies. The Bounce Back program consists of 10 group sessions, 1-3 parent sessions, and 1-2 individual sessions.

A key component of Bounce Back is the "My Story" trauma narrative, where a clinician guides a student through writing, illustrating, and sharing his or her personal trauma. This method helps children use language to identify and label feelings, helps them process what happened to them, decreases their anxiety when thinking about the event, and provides a way for them to communicate about their symptoms.

Training to implement the Bounce Back program is available online or through in-person trainings. Visit http://bouncebackprogram.org for more information.

 

Initial feedback from multi-cultural elementary schools shows that students participating in Bounce Back had significant reductions in anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms compared to students who did not participate.

 

  Audra Langley shares feedback from clinicians and teachers about the effects of the Bounce Back program.

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