Students Traumatized in Special Education Across America, Seclusion, Restraint, and Aversives – For over a decade, the United States Health & Human Services Department’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has recognized that seclusion and restraint are traumatic NOT therapeutic.  Mental health experts have developed tools and protocols that have successfully helped many mental health facilities and schools significantly reduce seclusion and restraints. While America’s special needs children are traumatized at school, sometimes physically injured to the point of death, legislators still debate whether or not to support a federal law to keep all children safe. Some debate whether to support a “federal” law because they are “pro-states rights”. Yet, disabled children can’t wait around for individual states to “do the right thing” and pass similar laws. If states were capable of doing the right thing, they would have already done it. Other legislators listen to the lobbyists who demand they “need” to use seclusion and restraint even though these methods are not evidence based or therapeutic.