What is Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care? 

When many of us hear the word “trauma,” we can picture dramatic events like car accidents, combat zones, or natural disasters. While those experiences certainly qualify, trauma is far broader, more common, and more personal than those images suggest. It can arise from any experience that disrupts a person’s sense of safety, predictability, or control.

Renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Judith Herman, who helped define the concept of complex trauma, describes trauma as events that overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope and leave them feeling powerless or disconnected. Herman (1992) also highlights the deep connections between trauma and social injustice, emphasizing the importance of validating survivors’ experiences. Her work underscores the lasting impact of complex post-traumatic stress and the need to understand trauma within broader social contexts.

Trauma is incredibly widespread. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), around two-thirds of children in the United States experience at least one traumatic event by the age of 16. Furthermore, trauma is highly prevalent among individuals living with mental health diagnoses, often serving as a key contributing factor to their conditions. Research indicates that between 49% and 100% of people with severe psychiatric disorders have experienced trauma, and multiple traumatic events are common within this group (Valiente et al., 2025), making trauma an almost universal phenomenon among individuals with severe mental health challenges  

The impacts of trauma can be far-reaching. The DSM-5 (APA, 2022) symptom profile for trauma includes intrusive symptoms such as recurring thoughts or dreams, avoidance of distressing memories or reminders, hyperarousal or reactivity, and alterations in cognition or mood. These symptoms can disrupt a person's life significantly and interfere with daily functioning. This reality emphasizes the belief that living with trauma means it can shape how trauma survivors navigate and interpret the world around them.

For many organizations serving people living with a mental health diagnosis, treatment begins with providers being grounded in trauma-informed care (TIC). TIC is an organizational framework designed to address and mitigate trauma across all levels of an organization (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2014). The framework assumes that trauma is pervasive and affects everyone and, therefore, creates treatment environments that account for its presence in every aspect of care.

In practice, this begins the moment a client walks through the door for the first time. Gone are the fluorescent hallways, locked doors, and sterile waiting rooms that evoke control, sterility, and dehumanization. Historically, psychiatric environments were structured around compliance, where a person's history mattered less than their symptoms, and institutional authority went largely unquestioned. For marginalized and minoritized communities, these environments carried an additional weight, often mirroring the very dynamics of oppression they endured outside the walls of care. Trauma-informed settings are built on a different premise. Healing requires a sense of safety that the environment itself must earn. Thoughtfully designed physical spaces, including warm lighting, natural textures, private areas for reflection, and welcoming common areas, signal from the first moment that this place is different. Relational norms rooted in cultural humility reinforce that message. Clients are greeted warmly and should feel welcomed into the treatment setting.

This same philosophy extends into the clinical relationship itself. TIC shifts treatment away from a "what's wrong with you?" approach toward "what happened to you?", helping providers understand behaviors as adaptive responses to past experiences rather than symptoms to be managed. Documentation and decision-making are not processes that happen behind closed doors. They occur in real time, with the patient present as an active participant in their own care. People are offered genuine choices about the frequency of visits, the modality of care, and the pacing of treatment. This emphasis on safety, choice, and empowerment fosters greater trust and collaboration between clients and providers, reduces the risk of re-traumatization, improves treatment adherence and outcomes, and supports more sustainable recovery. Research consistently demonstrates these effects, showing that trauma-informed approaches also protect against staff burnout (Alhalal, 2025), strengthening the quality of care from the inside out.

At the Brandt Treatment Center and Retreat, trauma-informed care is woven into every aspect of the environment and clinical approach, ensuring that everyone is met with safety, respect, and empowerment as the foundation for meaningful and lasting healing.