This article will explain why trauma-informed care practices are crucial in behavioral health services. These practices not only improve client outcomes but also prevent retraumatization, support recovery, and create safer environments for both clients and professionals.
There are several different types of trauma (acute, chronic, complex). These can be things that an individual experiences directly, things that happen to them. It can also be things that someone witnesses, perhaps something that happened to a loved one. It can, by extension, be something that an individual didn’t witness but learned about second hand, happening to a loved one.
Trauma experiences among behavioral health clients are common, and trauma affects mental and physical health. With an increased risk of co-occurring disorders (e.g., PTSD, addiction, depression), it is important for practitioners to understand that untreated trauma leads to poor treatment outcomes.
Secondarily, it’s equally important to learn about best practices for trauma-informed care and how they can be incorporated into the care your staff or organization provides.
Trauma Informed Care
What is trauma-informed care and practice? This is a form of Mental Health Service that takes into consideration the traumatic experiences that individuals have had and, as a result, modifies certain aspects of the treatment that is provided in order to be respectful and sensitive to that trauma.
Six Core Principles
Trauma-informed care has six core principles:
- Safety: Create a safe environment physically and emotionally for anyone who has experienced traumatic events.
- Trust: Build trust by being respectful of those experiences and being open and honest during communication and treatment.
- Collaboration: Work in tandem with individuals, their families, and any other relevant parties to make sure that everyone’s needs are properly met.
- Peer Support: Provide opportunities for those who have experienced trauma to connect with people and share their stories, building peer support with those who have similar experiences.
- Empowerment: Give individuals the power to make decisions regarding their treatment so that they feel respected and heard and they know exactly what’s going on in terms of their treatment.
- Cultural Sensitivity: Be respectful of cultural, historical, or gender differences.
With these six core principles, practitioners can provide the best possible treatment.
Understanding Trauma’s Impact on Behavioral Health
Trauma has a direct impact on the emotional, physical, and behavioral health of clients.
- Trauma can lead to an increased risk of developing mental health disorders or substance abuse disorders.
- Trauma can, in those with pre-existing mental health or substance use disorders, increase the symptoms and add secondary conditions.
- Trauma can lead to emotional dysregulation, causing individuals to struggle with outbursts or severe emotional responses that they cannot manage.
- Trauma can cause cognitive problems, including issues with concentration, decision-making, or memory.
- Trauma leads to sleep disturbances, which can increase the risk of other physical health issues like chronic pain.
So why does trauma have to be addressed during treatment in order for treatment to be successful?
If a patient with depression or anxiety has underlying trauma, providing treatment solely for depression or anxiety can cause several issues. For example:
- It can lead to accidental retraumatization, where something that a staff member does or says triggers the client, leading them to experience increased trauma and decreasing the likelihood that they will stick with their treatment program.
- It can disrupt the long-term success of any treatment plan, such as a client getting treatment for depression or anxiety, only to have the underlying trauma diminish the results of that treatment several weeks or months after the fact.
To help overcome these issues or circumvent them entirely, it’s important to not only address trauma but to do so using trauma-informed care practices.
The Goals and Values Behind Trauma-Informed Care Practices
The main goals and values of these practices are to encourage a shift from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
With this new mindset, staff members and organizations have an opportunity to build emotionally and physically safe treatment environments for their patients. This means that patients have more control over the treatment plan they receive, better input and choice, leading to the development of deeper trust and facilitating dignity and resilience.
Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Care
The best practices include:
- Training all staff to recognize trauma signs
- Universal screening and person-centered treatment planning
- Creating safe, non-triggering environments
- Supporting client resilience and strengths
How Trauma-Informed Care Helps Clients Heal
Best practices for trauma-informed care have concrete advantages for clients especially in terms of the healing process.
How does it help?
- Improved trust and communication with providers
- Increased participation in care and better treatment adherence
- Reduced emotional triggers and retraumatization
- Better long-term recovery outcomes
Using these best practices helps to improve trust and communication with providers. When patients feel that there is a higher level of trust and more open communication, they are more likely to participate in their care. One of the biggest factors in determining outcomes has to do with the level of patient participation so the more a practitioner can encourage treatment adherence, the better the healing process.
These practices help to reduce emotional triggers and, as a direct result, reduce the risk of re-traumatization during the healing process, meaning that there is a much better long-term outcome for each patient.
Organizational and Staff Benefits
How do these trauma-informed care practices help staff members?
- Reduced burnout and secondary trauma in providers
- Better coordination across clinical teams
- Stronger alignment with ethical and evidence-based practice
Trauma-informed practices actually prioritize staff wellness, so staff members who witness or help those who have undergone trauma have access to support structures for the emotional toll or secondary trauma that this can cause.
Organizations and staff members alike have the opportunity to better understand the potential impact that trauma has on themselves or their employees and, as a result, create plans to mitigate stress and improve overall mental health.
Aligning with best practices for trauma-informed care gives staff members a sense of purpose, feeling much more empowered in the work that they do while also fostering open communication, especially with a team. Both of these help to reduce turnover, which, by extension, increases the efficacy of trauma-informed care for patients who get to stick with the same care team throughout their healing process.
Summing Up
Overall, trauma-informed care in behavioral health services brings with it great importance, with several benefits for patients who are undergoing the healing process and for the organization and staff who provide those services.
See how your organization can adopt, implement, and refine trauma-informed approaches as the foundation of ethical behavioral health services.
