Mental Health Monthly #8: Trauma-Informed Care

Contributor: Randi Libbon, MD

The Core features of trauma-informed care include:

1. Patient empowerment, choice and collaboration. This means educating patients and allowing patients to make choices about their care when possible. Collaboration helps to level the power differential between patients and providers through shared decision making.
2. Safety and sensitivity: Developing health care settings and activities that ensure patients’ physical and emotional safety taking into account their diverse backgrounds of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and ethnicity
3. Trustworthiness and transparency: Creating clear expectations with patients about what proposed treatments entail, who will provide services, and how care will be provided.

Resources:

Reeves E. A synthesis of the literature on trauma-informed care. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2015;36(9):698-709. doi: 10.3109/01612840.2015.1025319. PMID: 26440873.

Molloy L, Fields L, Trostian B, Kinghorn G. Trauma-informed care for people presenting to the emergency department with mental health issues. Emerg Nurse. 2020 Mar 10;28(2):30-35. doi: 10.7748/en.2020.e1990. Epub 2020 Feb 25. PMID: 32096370.

Key ingredients for Trauma-informed care from SAMHSA

https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/programs_campaigns/childrens_mental_health/atc-whitepaper-040616.pdf

The National Childhood Traumatic Stress Network:

https://www.nctsn.org/trauma-informed-care

The Science of Adverse Childhood Events and Toxic Stress:

https://www.acesaware.org/ace-fundamentals/the-science-of-aces-toxic-stress/

From the Institute for Health Care Improvement:

http://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/how-trauma-informed-care-can-help-patients-and-clinicians-during-behavioral-health-emergencies