ABSTRACT
While the San Francisco Bay Area attracts much media attention for its Internet giants, famous entrepreneurs, high cost of living, and beautiful natural landscapes, the region also has its fair share of social and economic woes. Like other urban areas across the United States, pockets of the Bay Area are riddled with community violence that occasionally garner national attention because of fatal shootings and gang warfare in cities such as Oakland and Richmond. While local news channels highlight the frequent shooting deaths of largely African American and Latino teenage young men and boys, the full story of the survivors is rarely highlighted. Many survivors frequently battle what Bessel van der Kolk helped termdevelopmental trauma disorder, a form of complex post-traumatic disorder (Luxenberg, Spinazzola, & Van Der Kolk, 2001).
