As we realign with our work and goals a year into Whole Health Louisiana, this season is a great opportunity to refresh your knowledge about trauma-informed practices.
What is trauma?
Trauma refers to experiences that cause intense physical and psychological stress reactions. Trauma can overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope, cause feelings of helplessness and diminish their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences. Traumatic experiences can include:
- Adverse childhood experiences
- Racism, discrimination and oppression
- Poverty
- Physical, sexual and emotional violence
- Separation from, or loss of, a loved one
- Disasters
What is trauma-informed practice?
Trauma-informed practice refers to an approach that recognizes and responds to the impact of trauma on people’s wellbeing. According to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), trauma-informed practices “realizes the widespread impact of trauma, recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma and response by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures and practices and seeks to actively resist re-traumatization.”
The Six Guiding Principles of Trauma-Informed Practice
- Safety: Ensuring physical and emotional safety for all. Making sure staff and the people they serve feel physically and psychologically safe.
- Trustworthiness and transparency: Maximizing trust, ensuring clear expectations and having consistent boundaries. Conduct decision-making processes with transparency and the intention of building and maintaining trust.
- Peer support and mutual self-help: Key factors for establishing safety and trust include utilizing people’s stories and lived experiences to promote healing, safety and resilience. This also helps create peer support and mutual self-help.
- Collaboration and mutuality: Sharing power and decision-making, and working with one another, not to or for. This recognizes that everyone has a role to play in the healing process.
- Empowerment, voice and choice: Individual strengths are recognized, built on and validated. This refers to the right to self-determination and autonomy.
- Cultural, historical and gender issues: To help move past cultural stereotypes and biases; leverage the healing value of cultural connections; and incorporate policies, protocols and processes responsive to the racial, ethnic and cultural needs of staff and people served.