​So what's my beef with The Man? Or, why I study institutions.

 

As a resident ofOregon and long time X-Files fan, I am no stranger to rebelling againstoppressive systems or conspiracy theories. But as a trauma researcher, I wasdrawn to understand how institutions may harm people for a much simpler reason:efficiency.

Interpersonal traumacan be an overwhelming field to study - once you get a peek below the surface,the prevalence of violence is startling: nearly a quarter of women who attend college and a third of women who enter the military experience sexual assault, between 10-30% of children experience severe emotional, sexual, or physical abuse,and domestic violence affects far too many women and men alike. Where do you even start to interrupt this pattern of violence?

When I was gettingready to apply for graduate school in clinical psychology, I'd often reflect onthe sheer magnitude of the problem as I read research or stories about  military sexual trauma or campus sexual assault(then, my area of focus). The idea of helping one person at a time recover fromabuse or preventing violence through education, social measures, policy - allseemed like important but small steps. That's about when I started seeing atheme in how people talked about their experiences:

"There was also a pervasive sentiment comingfrom the administration that I should accept at least some part of the blameand that I shouldn’t want to ‘ruin his life.' Hearing this from theadministrators who I trusted with my case really altered my impression ofmyself. It wasn’t until I … got out of the environment … that I realized howtruly manipulative aspects of their response had been.” - Student from aliberal arts college who pursued disciplinary measures after sexual assault

“The thing that makes me the most angry is not eventhe rape itself; it’s the commanders that were complicit in covering upeverything that happened.”  - Ariana Klay,US Marine Corps

These same themes --that institutional responses to orcomplicity in abuse were a source of added harm-- appeared in research about women seeking legal and medical services following domestic violence, men across the US, Europe, andLatin America seeking restitution for years of clergy abuse hidden by churches,and families of elderly people who discovered rampant mistreatment by staff innursing homes.

I suddenly recognized the way to make a real impact: Icould try to understand and prevent a source of added harm related to trauma,one that was occurring at a large scale and seemed to have a relativelyidentifiable pattern. People were recognizing this pattern, talking about it,but not naming it. No one was measuring it, actually assessing the degree ofadded harm. Sometimes psychology gets flack for formalizing measures of thingsthat people find "intuitive" - but the fact is, naming and measuringsomething systematically and reporting the results in black and white tends tohold more weight than lay knowledge, no matter how intuitive.

So, that's why I study institutions. This work hasbeen exciting and enriching - we've helped people make sense of their ownexperiences and helped some institutions try to change how they function inorder to prevent institutional betrayal. At times I now find myself overwhelmedby common institutional betrayal seems to be - each story of an institutiondoing the wrong thing (NFL, looking at you) reminds me that this work is justbeginning. Changing the way institutions respond to trauma and interact withvulnerable people (whether due to trauma, ill health, age, etc.) is anefficient means to prevent a great deal of harm.