Person with problems, not a patient with an illness. What happened to you?
It is sometimes said that traumatic reactions are normal reactions to abnormal situations. As true as this statement is, it’s also true that individuals’ coping reactions post-trauma remain poorly understood, even by many of the people who are in the best positions to offer support and treatment to trauma victims. It is important for everyone to understand that victims of traumatic events, such as human trafficking, will not always react or behave in the way that we might expect.
There is now strong and growing evidence of a link between trauma and mental health, as well as evidence that the current mental health system can retraumatise trauma survivors. There is also emerging evidence that trauma-informed systems are effective and can benefit staff and trauma survivors.
Trauma informed approaches for mental health services are strengths-based and they reframe complex behaviour in terms of its function in helping survival and as a response to situational or relational triggers. Reframing refers to looking at, presenting, and thinking about a phenomenon in a new and different way, and replaces traditional individual/medical model approaches to madness and distress with a social perspective.
Key principles of trauma informed approaches as being:
recognition of the prevalence, signs and impacts of trauma (the ‘trauma lens’)
resist re-traumatisation by understanding operational practices, power differentials and other potentially re-traumatising features of psychiatric services
cultural, historical and gender contexts and acknowledging community or other specific trauma
trustworthiness and transparency with the aim of building trust
collaboration and mutuality with an understanding of the power imbalances between service users and staff
empowerment, choice and control, with the adoption of strengths based approaches
safety encompassing moral, physical, psychological, social and cultural safety
survivor partnerships and an understanding that survivor leadership, peer support and coproduction are integral to trauma informed organisations
pathways to trauma-specific care with support for survivors to access it where desired