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What is Trauma-Informed Care?

Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a framework for helping people who have experienced trauma by acknowledging the impact of trauma on their lives. TIC can be used in a variety of settings, including health care, mental health care, education, and the workplace.

Trauma-informed care is an approach to health and social services that recognizes the impact of trauma on people’s lives. Its aim is to create a safe, respectful, and empowering environment for healing. Many people who seek help have experienced some form of trauma, such as abuse, violence, neglect, loss, or oppression, and these experiences can affect their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Trauma-informed care acknowledges the resilience and strength of people who have survived trauma and honors their diverse coping strategies and preferences to provide more effective care.

The 7 Principles of Trauma-Informed Care

  1. Safety
    Throughout any healthcare organization, the staff and the patients they serve should feel physically and psychologically safe.
  2. Trustworthiness and transparency
    Organizational operations and decisions are conducted with transparency with the goal of building and maintaining trust among staff, patients, and family members of those receiving services.
  3. Peer support and mutual self-help
    Peer support and mutual self-help is integral to the organizational and service delivery approach and are understood as a key vehicle for building trust, establishing safety, and encouraging empowerment.
  4. Collaboration and mutuality
    There is recognition that healing happens in relationships and in the meaningful sharing of power and decision-making. The organization recognizes that everyone has a role to play in a trauma-informed approach.
  5. Empowerment voice and choice
    Every healthcare organization aims to strengthen the staff, patient, and family members’ experience of choice and recognizes that every person’s experience is unique and requires an individualized approach.
  6. Cultural, historical, and gender issues
    The organization actively moves past cultural stereotypes and biases, offers culturally responsive services, leverages the healing value of traditional cultural connections, and recognizes and addresses historical trauma.
  7. Avoiding re-traumatization
    Trauma-informed care involves being mindful of potential triggers to prevent re-traumatization, ensuring a safer therapeutic journey.

How TIC is Different Than Other Types of Therapies

Unlike traditional therapy, trauma-informed treatment integrates an awareness of trauma into every aspect of therapy while making safety a priority for patients. A trauma-informed approach to care acknowledges that health care providers need to have a complete picture of a patient’s life situation—past and present—to provide effective health care services.

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The Benefits of TIC for Trauma Over Other Types of Therapies

Trauma-informed care is designed to create a sense of safety in patients.
Creating a sense of safety increases the chances of people engaging with their treatment and being more willing to share their experiences with their healthcare providers.

TIC can help patients to actively avoid re-traumatization.
Re-traumatization can cause serious mental health problems, such as severe anxiety and clinical depression. Trauma-informed care actively works to avoid this.

TIC empowers the patient to feel that they are in control of their treatment.
Self-empowerment offers patients a better sense of control over their own lives, which is a critical feeling that they need to regain for themselves.

TIC can be used to bring individuals with shared experiences together.
This level of peer support enables patients to feel part of something greater than themselves and helps them avoid feeling different from everyone else.

Trauma-Focused Therapy Techniques

There are a large variety of techniques used in TIC, and they vary based on the age and trauma experience of the patient. Therapists use creative strategies and activities to address memories, emotions, or problematic behaviors. These are conducted in a way that is sensitive and unique to each individual’s experience. Techniques generally used include:

  • Relaxation techniques to regulate mood and reduce hyperarousal
  • Cognitive restructuring to identify and change unhelpful thoughts and beliefs about self
  • Gradually confronting fears to reduce avoidance and stress
  • Normalizing and validating thoughts and feelings
  • Building self-esteem and reducing shame
  • Somatic therapies and mindfulness to let go of the past and connect to the present
  • Building loving and trusting relationships with the people in your life.