Report for The Hannah Institute for the Study and Prevention of Infant Trauma
Completed by; Jo Spencer, Executive Director
[email protected]
December 28, 2008
The purpose of this report is two-fold;
To give an account of my work with the non-profit I founded ten years ago, ”The Hannah Institute for the Study and Prevention of Infant Trauma.”
To demonstrate that the primary problem with the human delivery service system is the ignorance and denial in addressing root causes. The root causes I refer to are based in the social, psychological, biological, and political environment.
I worked as a mental health counselor in psychiatric treatment, drug and alcohol treatment, and the criminal justice field spanning a period of twenty-eight years. My clinical experience is broad and deep. Yet, I did not finish my B.A. until I had been a counselor for sixteen years. There were clients to be helped and I was able. Acquiring academic credentials was very low on my list of priorities. Because of this I have a more objective stance with the system. Increasingly, in my work as a counselor, I came to see myself as an advocate for clients and patients, and felt less and less of an alliance for the system or the program directors I worked under.
I am well qualified to speak to the issues I am addressing. Had I desired to earn a Ph.D. it is not my intellectual capabilities that would have prevented me from it. The emotional problems I suffered in infancy have created a complex of symptoms within me that have resulted in an extremely unstable life. Consequently, the way I have learned psychology is different. At this point I consider myself an educator, a writer, and a minister.
As I was completing my B.A. I was allowed to attain 36 units through prior experience in the counseling field. I chose to take the CLEP (College Level Entrance Exam ) for both psychology and sociology. At that point I had been working full-time as a counselor for many years. I had no idea what questions would be asked on the exam. I had never had any sort of psychology or sociology class. I did not feel compelled to study for the exams, or to find out what might be on them. My feeling was that if I couldn’t pass those exams there was something wrong with the system.
I took the exams; 200 questions on one, 150 on the other. The very first question had something to do with neurotransmitters. I knew the answer. I passed those exams in the 98th percentile. All of this is to assert that I feel as qualified as anyone to speak to mental health issues.
In 1994 a series of tragedies occurred in my own life which resulted in the trauma of my infancy being triggered. That was the year I had a breakdown, committed myself to uncovering and understanding the trauma and neglect I experienced during the first year of my life, and began writing a book which was finally published four years ago.
Please go to www.xlibris.com/HealingtheWoundThatWontHeal.html
The cover photo is myself as a baby and my father a few weeks before I watched him die in a pool of blood and be carried out in a body bag. You can read the first four pages of the book on-line which will explain the thrust of my work in early trauma.
I completed my B.A. in 1998 with an emphasis on biological psychology. I wrote a ten-page paper titled, “The Influence of Traumatic Stress on Brain Plasticity”, and a 35-page paper titled, “Anti-Social Personality; Is There a Neural Pathway for Conscience?” With both papers I substantiate a foundational basis for looking at prenatal and early childhood neglect and trauma as being the root for most psychopathology. In the latter paper, I chose three case histories almost at random, each of men who had committed murder. With each case I trace the trajectory of their emotional problems back to trauma in early life. Both of these papers are available for anyone who cares to read them.
When I founded “The Hannah Institute” I was very clear about my purpose and assumed that this work would be recognized and supported. For the most part, this has not been the case. I have received under $500.00 in cash donations. I resigned my last counseling job six years ago and during this time I have supported myself with my house painting business. As my life has deteriorated financially and medically, I lost all sense of purpose with my non-profit. More and more I have survived only because people are quite willing to exploit my skill as a painter, or they feel sorry for me and want to help me along the way. Over the past few years I have made less than $10,000.00 a year.
The hardest part is not the poverty itself, it is the complete lack of recognition for my work. It’s as if no one has been paying close enough attention and I simply do not know how to fundraise for my own non-profit.
The mission statement for The Hannah Institute reads;

The mission of The Hannah Institute is to increase public awareness
about infant and childhood trauma, its effect upon development, and
the implication of this for society. We are dedicated to continually
reviewing the research being done in this area, providing education
to the public and to treatment professionals, and to offering counseling
to those who have suffered such trauma. We believe that it is only by
uncovering and healing root causes that an individual can ever be whole.

During the last ten years I have sporadically promoted this work. I have been on public television in California and Nashville, there have been numerous newspaper articles written by others or myself about this work. My book has sold 50 copies and is in two libraries in Kentucky. With this exposure, there are now thousands of people who have heard my story about my infancy and my commitment to addressing root causes. In short, I have carried out the objectives I originally set for myself.
The work I do isn’t just about childhood trauma; it is about empowering people to discover the truth about who they are and then having the courage to speak that truth. It’s about self-education; about claiming the right to learn about reality for ourselves, directly, without always relying on others for knowledge. This includes knowledge about our bodies, health, nutrition, brain chemistry, and psychology. It is about wresting away from the mental health system the control over people’s hearts and minds.
I have worked with clients dealing with addiction, incarceration, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, PTSD, dissociative disorder, and every other label that can be applied to human problems. Almost without exception, the clients and patients I have worked with have wanted to do better, get well, work on their problems, be drug-free, feel like a valued member of society. The problem is with the system. Almost without exception, all my attempts to work with program directors, university professors, and ministers have been met with resistance, denial, and disregard.
To give a few examples. When I was first working on my book I was considering applying to the University of Kentucky. I had a conversation with the Head of the Psychology department, explaining to him my desire to focus in the field of early trauma. He thought I was asking for prior work credit and informed me that UK does not offer that. I explained that I wasn’t asking for that, only that there might be a faculty person to take an interest in the book and serve as a mentor. This is exactly what he said. “I fail to see what writing a book about abandonment trauma has to do with completing a degree in psychology.”
Another example. When my book was a few weeks away from publication I contacted a reporter with the Winchester Sun newspaper in Kentucky. I asked if he would do a feature on the book and the work I am doing in trauma education. We met for an hour. His interest and questions were in-depth and to the point. I then left to visit my daughter in Hawaii. The reporter and I stayed in email contact and we were both excited about the article. He then emailed me saying the editor would not let him print the article because I was no longer living in Winchester.
I then wrote directly to the Editor-in-Chief with the intention of putting on enough pressure to get the article published. I explained that I travel a lot, that my mother’s people were some of the original settlers in Kentucky, (not to mention my Cherokee ancestors). I made a veiled threat that when I was next in Winchester I would continue to market the book and I hoped I would not have to say they nixed the article. So, how amazing! The article appeared, but cut down to one small paragraph placed where hardly anyone saw it. I believe that part of the reason my work is not being recognized by the media is that it is about my father’s World War II trauma. We aren’t supposed to be thinking about the trauma of war, are we?
My experience with ministers has been equally as frustrating. There is a ministry within the jail in Sonoma County, CA called Friends Outside. I went into meet with the man in that office. I sat across from him trying to get enough of his attention to explain the nature of my work, and in particular, the relationship between early trauma and criminal behavior. He was too preoccupied to listen. Finally, he told me that he didn’t believe that childhood had anything to do with being incarcerated. I then got more focused on giving him some information to dispel that notion. He then told me this; “You know, I have a friend who is a psychiatrist. He was molested when he was four and he says he didn’t begin to heal until he realized that he had some part in being molested.” I told him that was sick thinking and he needed to do some homework if he was going to continue to sit in that seat offering to help people.
Comprehensive Care is our mental health system in Kentucky. It is the umbrella for almost every mental health agency in rural Kentucky. It is therefore, a monopoly and it has a tremendous power over the lives of Appalachian people. Over the years I hear more and more stories from clients who are caught up in the system and feel that if they don’t comply with their comp care worker’s recommendation to be on psychotropic medication it will go against them.
I naively assumed Comprehensive Care would be a source of support for me in doing education about trauma. Not so. I contacted Comprehensive Care in Winchester, KY on three occasions. Each time, I went into the office with my book. Each time the staff in the office were excited about me coming to do an in-service training. Each time I was reassured that the Program Director would contact me. Each time, he didn’t.
You may be assuming from all this that I have a disagreeable demeanor and that I have approached these people in the wrong way. This is not so. During these years that I was having these encounters I was very much the professional and in full-command of my emotions. Their resistance says everything about the system they work for. I believe that people in positions of influence within the system are public fiduciaries. We are entrusting them to use their positions, and lucrative salaries, for the public good.
Three steps forward and two steps back has all but killed my spirit. It’s not that I overestimated myself; it’s that I overestimated the world. I witnessed as my baby infant girl went into the world to bring this critical knowledge forth and I have witnessed as she has been continually ignored and shut out. If I, with all the knowledge I have, all the years of experience in the psychology field, and the tremendous commitment I have to this work, meets with this level of ignorance and denial…how much of a chance does a client caught up in the system have to heal?
The human service delivery system needs some serious reform. It’s not a question of lack of funds. There has been billions of dollars poured into the system, much of which gets siphoned off at the top. The business of humans helping humans is always going to be messy and flawed. But, we need to be so much more enlightened and informed about the services we offer. The paradigm has to change.
Please feel free to share this report with whomever you wish.
Sincerely,
Jo Spencer