GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A local mental health expert says that Jayme Closs will have a long road ahead of her with plenty of potential obstacles.
Pam Clough is an outpatient therapist with Bellin Health and says there are quite a few concerns in an extreme case, such as this.
“The foremost concern would be grief for her parents,” she explains.
A tricky dynamic moving forward is ensuring that Jayme isn’t rushed back into everyday life at too quick of a pace.
“It would be a very slow pace and it would depend on how the person is reacting to being reintegrated,” she says.
Another dynamic of note is Jayme’s age.
“When a person is in their early adolescence their main job for development is starting to break away from their family and learning how to trust others,” explains Clough. “And if something like this happens it can definitely inhibit another person’s trust for other people.”
That means Jayme’s friends and family will now play a vital role in helping her along the way.
While Clough notes that her friends will be put in a tricky spot at a very early age, as well.
“That’s tough because sometimes, especially when we’re talking about adolescents, peers may not know what to say to that person,” she says.
And while it may be difficult to know exactly what to say, it’s always better to acknowledge the incident, rather than pretending it never happened.
“It’s better to address it, to say, ‘This is a terrible thing that happened and we all know that it happened,’” she explains. “Otherwise, that’s when shunning happens.”
And in extremely traumatic incidents sometimes the victim moves away to start fresh somewhere else, but that’s not a course of action that Clough would recommend.
“I believe that it’s always best to try to go back to where you came from,” she says. “Because that’s where your roots are, that’s where the people are that know this person the best.”
