What are trauma-informed services? ( A brief review)

In this article, readers will gain insight into what is trauma, how it affects individuals, how you manage trauma, and the care services required. This article will equip the reader to understand trauma and provide solutions for the same.

What is Trauma-informed Care?

• Long-term issues in coping with a traumatic experience can lead to mental health issues like acute stress disorder, PTSD, paranoia, anxiety, etc.

• Trauma-informed care in its essence deals with understanding the impact of trauma and creating a safe environment for recovery.

• Trauma-informed services can be divided into public, mental, and private health providers.

What are trauma-informed services?

Before gaining insight into the services related to trauma, it is important to have a clear understanding of the concept of trauma and how it impacts an individual.

What is trauma and how does it impact us?

Trauma, comes from the same name in Greek, literally meaning ‘wound’. While trauma in physical health refers to visible wounds on the body, the psychological damage is unseen. Psychological trauma is usually a result of an experience that is negative, harmful, and deeply disturbing for the individual. It is important to remember that such experiences are extremely troubling and can manifest differently in each individual. However, long-term issues in coping with a traumatic experience can lead to mental health issues like acute stress disorder, PTSD, paranoia, anxiety, etc. Trauma can affect each part of an individual’s life. Here are some common signs:

• Physically - tremors, shaking, easily startled, feeling tired and low in energy.

• Emotionally - frequent crying, feeling sad, feeling scared, and having anger outbursts.

• Lifestyle - difficulty sleeping, lack of focus, avoiding activities, people and places that remind of trauma, reduced appetite, and disinterest in life in general.

How common is trauma?

There are different kinds of such events and experiences that can result in psychological trauma:

• One of the most common forms of trauma is seen in adults who have undergone abuse or negative experience of some kind during their childhood. Vulnerability and lack of worldly understanding make it difficult for a child to process and identify a traumatic experience. This is why parents, caregivers, and other adults around the child help in supporting and processing a difficult situation. Children from broken homes, neglecting parents, refugees, etc, do not have adequate support from adults and instead carry unresolved trauma in adulthood.

• Another form of trauma is widespread and has developed due to sexual harassment, rape, and eve-teasing. Women are more likely to develop this kind of trauma. Discrimination, social rigidity, exploitation on the domestic front, and lack of resources make women more sensitive to facing traumatic experiences.

• Other forms of trauma are related to disturbances and hostility in the individual environment. Events such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, riots, accidents, and fires can become life-threatening quickly and lead to deep trauma. Losing a loved one or witnessing someone in motor accidents and plane crashes can also be e traumatic.

How to deal with trauma?

Each process and copes with trauma differently. Although most traumatic experiences are resolved internally by a person, intense experiences do not. In situations where a severe traumatic experience has occurred, it is crucial to provide the correct resources and help to the individual. A major traumatic experience can be life-threatening, and decrease an individual’s resources and overall health. Hence, it is important to be able to assess the exact impact of the trauma on the individual. Along with providing necessary resources foremost with the trauma.

To get help, professionals should be in contact who are equipped to understand the situation. Professionals understand how complex a situation is and are responsive to the sensitiveness and immediacy of the situation. Such professionals are trained in trauma-informed care.

What is Trauma-informed care?

Trauma-informed care in its essence deals with understanding the impact of trauma and creating an environment for recovery. WIthin trauma-informed care, it is important to understand the multilayer damage that the trauma causes. To address such damage, people at the ground level, as well as the policy level, need to collaborate. Such collaboration can help provide better treatment for physical and mental health conditions caused due to trauma. Trauma-informed care can improve engagement, health outcomes, and the well-being of staff and decrease the overall burden on resources.

Trauma-informed care requires internal change within the organizations. It is to be better prepared to deal with multifaceted issues that can occur while providing care to individuals going through different forms of trauma (for instance, adults and children require a different kind of care after experiencing trauma).

What consists of trauma-informed services?

Trauma-informed services can be divided into public, mental, and private health providers. However, at the core, trauma-informed services aim to help those who have experienced trauma by being better equipped to manage their needs.

In the Indian context, trauma-informed services are still an emerging sector. The majority of trauma-informed care is provided by mental health workers. There are several areas within the country where a trauma-informed approach can significantly enhance the provision of services. Such areas include:

• Social work and NGOs

• Mental health workers including agencies providing mental health care

• Medical services

• Nursing

• Public health workers

• Frontline workers

Importance of Trauma-informed services.

So far, we have discussed what trauma-informed services consist of and what are areas where they can help. Now, we need to understand why being trauma-informed is important and the reasoning behind developing such an approach.

The trauma-informed approach originated in the field of medicine in the United States. Doctors observed how war veterans continued to have flashbacks and nightmares even decades after the war. Then known as ‘shell shock, later became known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD). Since then the focus has shifted from veterans to everyone else. It was not until the 90s that public health workers discovered how substance abuse was found more common amongst trauma survivors. Such individuals also faced more difficulty in recovering from their addictions as the resources did not incorporate the trauma into treatment.

Since the 90s, there have been several pieces of research and changes in health resources to incorporate trauma-informed care for improving treatment practices. Lately, mental health and trauma-informed care have been collaborated to treat those who have survived trauma with sensitivity, hope, and collaboration.

How to improve the current situation?

In the Indian context, experiencing trauma is deeply related to environmental factors such as the availability of resources, community appraisal, etc. To introduce and improve the current health practices and incorporate trauma-informed care requires the inclusion of:

• Training and supervision for the staff

• Increasing communication channels between staff

• Engage survivors in the planning of the services

• Create safe physical environments for the survivors and the staff

• Prevent burnout and secondary trauma amongst staff

• Having elaborate screenings for identifying trauma

Ultimately, trauma-informed care can only be introduced with consideration at both the micro and macro levels within the organizations.

Important resources

• Child trauma informed care

• Trauma informed care for professionals

• Trauma informed for human services

Conclusion

In this article, readers gained insight into what is trauma, how it affects individuals, how you manage trauma, and the care services required. The article equipped the reader to understand trauma and provide solutions for the same.

FAQs (What are trauma-informed services)

What is a trauma-informed service?

Trauma-informed services focus on giving a person undergoing a traumatic experience a safe space to process and heal. Such services are carefully designed to keep the issues faced by the individual in mind. Since trauma is deeply linked to mental distress, trauma-informed services work around mental health provisions.

What are the 6 principles of trauma-informed care?

• Safety.

• Trustworthiness & transparency.

• Peer support.

• Collaboration & mutuality.

• Empowerment & choice.

• Cultural, historical & gender issues.

What is an example of trauma-informed care?

Substance use is a good example of trauma-informed care. Substance use is often caused as a means of surviving negative experiences. This perspective is generated through trauma-informed care.

What are the three pillars of trauma-informed care?

The three pillars of trauma-informed care are safety, connections, and managing emotional impulses.

References

• Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (US). (1970, January 01). Trauma-informed care: A sociocultural perspective. Retrieved April 24, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207195/

• What is Trauma-Informed care? - TRAUMA-INFORMED CARE Implementation Resource Center. (2020, April 13). Retrieved April 24, 2021, from https://www.traumainformedcare.chcs.org/what-is-trauma-informed-care/