New program helps Utah children process trauma and grief before it follows them into adulthood

SALT LAKE CITY — Intermountain Health Primary Children's Hospital will now offer trauma and grief counseling through a new, nationwide partnership. The program aims to help children process their trauma and grief now before it gets bottled up. Primary Children's president Dustin Lipson said one in 15 children will lose a parent or sibling before they turn 18. Psychologist Cristina Hudak-Rosander, behavioral health manager at Primary Children's, said research shows kids with untreated trauma or no support for their grief are at a greater risk for negative outcomes later on in life. "It can show up in needing a higher level of behavioral health support and hospitalizations to address mental health needs, it can show up as difficulties staying in school and being successful in school later in life," Hudak-Rosander said. They're using a treatment model developed by the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in Texas. The institute's Trauma and Grief Center is adding Utah to its nationwide network that includes hospitals in Michigan, Louisiana and Texas. The New York Life Foundation helps fund the initiative. First, children are screened during well-child visits to see if they need this kind of care. "Part of that care process model is to know, based on that screener, to give families feedback and explain to them what it means if their child is showing signs of traumatic stress and then connecting them to services and treatment that will help them and healing," Hudak-Rosander said. She said signs depend on the person and their age. "Traumatic stress and grief in young kids often can look like ADHD, and in terms of kids having a hard time focusing, having a hard time following directions, maybe being more disruptive of, it can also, for some kids look like depression or it can look like anxiety," Hudak-Rosander said. Their therapy looks different depending on their age. They want kids to graduate from the program. "The goal and therapy is to then help kids kind of take ... the grief that they're stuck in and turn it into good grief that we can carry with us and continue to live our lives and not have that grief get in the way," she said. Herriman mother of three, Janae Tafoya-Holbrook, said she knows families with medically complex children could use this. Her middle son, Cayden Powell's life started with challenges. "He was born 30 weeks premature," she said. "He had a congenital heart defect that led to some complications." Cayden used a wheelchair, a lot of other medical equipment and did at home therapies. Tafoya-Holbrook said it was hard on her family. "You go through your day to day with a layer of grief, but at the time, we didn't know ... that's what it was called," Tafoya-Holbrook said. When Cayden was placed on hospice, a bereavement coordinator helped her realize it was anticipatory grief. Cayden passed away in 2022. Tafoya-Holbrook feels hopeful that families of medically complex children like hers will get the mental health care they need through a new program. She already does with her youngest son. "I rely very heavily on Jenny, she's our PCH bereavement coordinator, and I will literally just send her a message or be like, 'Okay, Conner's asking me this about death and I don't know how to explain it to him,'" Tafoya-Holbrook said. She said parents are often overwhelmed by their own grief, and encounter challenges getting help. Having this type of counseling through the hospital, she said will help people live with their grief in healthy ways. "We save a seat at every holiday dinner for Cayden," Tafoya-Holbrook said. "We talk about him every day." This kind of counseling is a billed service. A representative for Intermountain Health said Intermountain Safe and Healthy Families accepts private insurance and Medicaid and has grant funding for uninsured children. Additionally,  Intermountain Health provides charity care to patients unable to pay for their care.

Related topics