Reply to University of Chicago on Trigger Warnings

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How does this work fairly for actual victims of rape or military vets or gays who have PTSD from actual trauma? Is it not fair to afford them a trigger warning for material that may indeed trigger a PTSD episode?[/quote]

Don't people with PTSD need psychiatric treatment, not trigger warnings? I don't understand how you can be in college and study literature or history or (insert probably many different disciplines here) and not be exposed to some pretty dreadful stuff. I don't have PTSD but I majored in Russian and couldn't eat or sleep for three days after I read book I of the Gulag Archipelago. If I HAD PTSD...what would a trigger warning have done? It's not like there's an alternate reading you can do if you're studying 20th century Soviet history, that lets you avoid hearing about the sick shit they did to political prisoners. I just don't get what trigger warnings are supposed to do in the classroom. If you're so emotionally fragile that you can't read a book or participate in a seminar or listen to a lecture, you need treatment. You can't handle college, which is already a pretty "safe space" compared to the real world.  [/quote]

+1[/quote]

Don't you think they need treatment and deserve trigger warnings to avoid episodes? It's odd you presume they are not in treatment. [/quote]

OP here. One big assumption about trigger warnings is the professors are in the business of figuring out what would be a "trigger." We are not trained psychologists or therapists--we simply do not have the skills to deal with PTSD. It is a lot of responsibility to thrust upon a faculty member to ask them to teach their subject matter so as to avoid unknown psychological trauma. The onus should really be on the student to talk to the professor before class to figure out if a class would be a good fit for the student. No student is forced to major in any particular discipline--if reading certain texts and talking about certain subjects are traumatizing enough to require a student to skip class or an assignment, choose a different discipline. If a student really wants to major in something, then s/he will have to figure out a way to master the information with his/her therapist.[/quote]

This.  Faculty members really do not have the qualifications to deal with PTSD and never will.  We are trained and we are good at our subject matter.  Most of us just do not have even the right kind of talents to be good at dealing with people with PTSD, although we are very good at the things we were hired to do.  Unfortunately, a person with PTSD  needs a professional to help them.[/quote]

Precisely.  Additionally, to complicate matters, PTSD manifests in an individual as a result of many factors, both genetic and environmental.  So, if two individuals encountering the same exact situation, one may experience PTSD and the other may not.  It is as impossible for professors and faculty to anticipate every situation that might be a 'trigger' as it is to anticipate which students may experience a PTSD episode in response to certain stimuli in a class.
[/quote]

+ a million.

As someone very familiar with neuroscience, let me make it as simple as possible: the very concept of "triggers" is hype, not science.

The idea of "trigger warnings" in educational settings is, well, I can't find the right polite expression...[/quote]

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