The Dougy Center, a Portland, Oregon program that helps young people deal with the loss of loved ones.

OVERVIEW

In the Volcano Room, padded floor to ceiling and packed with fluffy toys, an 8-year-old boy flailed wildly at another child with a tubular pillow, bopping him again and again.

Finally, the boy collapsed on the floor, sweaty and breathless after another exercise in venting his anger over the way his stepfather took his mother away.

‘He shot her in the back,’ the boy said. ‘She was alive a little bit, and then she died of a heart attack.’

Beverly Chappell, a Oregon Health Sciences University nurse, developed the Dougy Center after observing a dying boy comfort other sick children as he played with them. Chappell realized that kids talking to each other helped tranquilize the pain of their respective losses.

PROGRAM GOALS

To help children help each other work through losing a dear friend or relative.

PROGRAM METHODS

The Dougy Center uses play, crafts, and stories to facilitate kids’ expressions of emotions about the death that has occurred in their lives. A "talk circle" allows children to speak about their feelings. The "Art Room" is the place where kids make crafts and memory boxes. At the "Splatter Wall," young people vent their anger through splashing paint against the wall. Young people can hit punching bags or stuffed dolls in the "Volcano Room." Other rooms include a playroom filled with a sandbox and a room decked with a dollhouse, "where kids act out their family dynamics using action figures." A "Memory Wall" paints pictures of progress made by children during their stay at the Dougy Center.

PROGRAM OPERATION

The original Portland, Oregon Dougy Center opened in 1983 and has served more than 10,000 children ages 3-19. The center has also organized over 80 similar programs throughout the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Japan, and Australia. At any time, approximately 275 children are involved in Portland’s Dougy Center support groups. Their visits last between six months to three years.

PROGRAM TESTIMONIES

When children arrive at the center, they typically "paint menacing clouds. Colors are dark. Graveyards abound, and flowers cry black tears. Later paintings sport bright rainbows and happier memories: the cookies she used to bake, the car he used to drive."

According to Donna Schuurman, the center’s executive director, " ‘Our first batches of kids are now in college. What they tell us they take from here is that it’s OK to find people to talk with, safe people, and that really does help.’ "