There may be certain contexts in which training is an acceptable thing for a person to do or have done to them, but that typically doesn't apply to normal interactions between adult human beings.
I believe their implication was that we can and should be training ourselves, which is something we already do every day.
Your average lecturer or teacher is not trained in this way, at least specifically regarding trauma.
Just about 10 years ago cutting edge therapists were implanting false memories of childhood trauma.. If someone does not seem to need a therapist based on actual behavior then I don't think schools should be inviting lecturers to create pre-screening based on students reactions to trigger warnings, etc.
Bad ideas like every lecturer learning pop psychology "safety" and then reading tea leaves to tell people under their authority to get help is how you create a generation with psychological problems.
Its not like trigger warnings impose an onerous responsibility on teachers. There isn't any suggestion that they tell their students to get help. Its literally just a "heads up, I'm about to talk about X".
I'm not on a campus, and when I was in was in physics and math classrooms, but its hard to imagine this is that big of a deal.
As I see it this is basically recreating the weaker sex etiquette argument with bias based on experiences instead of gender. All the outrage.of speaking in front of the wrong people, special new requirements, plenty of signalling that you are better than others because they manage the necessary risks to do their job.
The only time lecturers wouldn't know when something might trigger someone is if they haven't actually read or looked at the content that they're about to present, which I find pretty hard to believe.
With the trigger warning what exactly? It's easy to announce something you are going to do and do it. The article addresses how pointless and possibly counterproductive that is.
With a trigger warning you simply don't consume the content. Ideally, this is posted on the syllabus, so that the amount of time wasted arguing about this is minimized.
The article doesn't really "address" anything, it just makes value statements. For example, this paragraph:
> Consider a meta-analysis of 39 studies in 2007 by Sam Houston State University in Texas that found a ‘clear, consistent association’ between using avoidance-based coping strategies (that is, staying away from upsetting stressors or avoiding thinking about them) and increased psychological distress. For a more concrete example, look at the findings from a study, published in 2011, of women who witnessed the Virginia Tech shooting of 2007 – those who tried to avoid thinking about what happened tended to experience more symptoms of depression and anxiety in the months that followed.
You could say that the association is that people who avoid their traumas are more depressed and anxious, but you could also say the reverse, that people who are more depressed or anxious try to avoid the traumas that caused those things in the first place. It's an association with no causal link, so you don't know which direction the association runs in or even if one is directly caused by the other.
Trigger warnings are an avoidance mechanism, period. The only difference between this and a peanut allergy is that people don't feel the need to moralize about how we're enabling peanut-avoiders like it's a bad thing.
Er, no. Most people are doing a rough calculation of frequency of real allergy to self diagnosis and quack practitioners.. Substitute another food like wheat and you get a different result. Then people start asking why perception of allergies is spreading when actual prevalence is unchanged and you get back to the proven science understanding of psychology, placebo.
https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/all...
That should be done safely and consensually within the context of a therapy session/plan with a professional guiding it.
It's like surgery. Entirely acceptable in certain scenarios, but you'd object if your English lit prof decided to DIY it during class.
I know an abuse survivor who has been in therapy for many years working on the impact of it. We avoid movies with abuse depictions as it causes severe disassociation and setbacks in that treatment.
Someone for whom it’s triggering but less severely so might just opt to watch said movies with a trusted friend on a day they’re feeling emotionally sound.
They allow folks to choose the level of exposure to optional, potentially damaging things. Just like an R rating on a film might make you pause before bringing an 8 year old to the theater.