Fostering Students’ Posttraumatic Growth: A Multitiered Approach for School Counselors

Abstract

By leveraging their unique position within the educational environment, school counselors can play a central role not only in identifying and supporting students who have experienced trauma, but also in facilitating their posttraumatic growth. Through a multitiered approach, school counselors can design comprehensive programs that foster posttraumatic growth at universal, targeted, and individualized levels. School counselors’ prevention and intervention efforts are essential in ensuring that students not only recover from trauma, but emerge with increased personal strength, improved abilities to relate to others, appreciation for the possibilities in life, more gratitude, and renewed meaning and purpose. We provide associated implications for practice, training, and research.

Keywords

posttraumatic growth school counseling trauma-informed multitiered system of supports MTSS

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