How did the trauma-informed movement start?

As the capture of institutions by DEI is loosening, the ‘trauma-informed approach’ is gaining ground.

Maxine Harris and Roger Fallot

Source: New Directions for Mental Health Services
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
The concept of trauma-informed approaches mushroomed into a dominant movement in academia, politics, courts, and American culture in a span of two decades. It appeared seemingly out of nowhere twenty-four years ago when two activist clinician-scholars published a foundational manifesto.
 
Who Did This?
Maxine Harris, PhD has first- or co-authored over sixty publications, mostly on case management and working with chronically mentally ill individuals, much of it incorporating her vision of trauma-informed services. She has also written eight books, mostly on women’s issues in mental health.
Psychologist Roger D. Fallot, PhD has first- or co-authored over thirty publications, mostly on trauma, and focused on religion and spirituality aspects.
 
The Premise
In 2001, Harris and Fallot edited a special issue of a journal called New Directions for Mental Health Services. It consisted of eight articles that introduced the new trauma-informed concept and examined its application across different service components.
 
The rationale for trauma-informed services was that trauma-victims are stymied from receiving critical social and medical services because either the agencies unwittingly put up terrifying barriers or staff at these agencies unconsciously treat victims insensitively. To rectify this, every agency must undergo a self-review and every staff member—even janitors—must go through training to learn how to accommodate every customer by assuming that every customer has been a trauma victim.

Trauma-informed services are different from trauma-specific services, which is clinical treatment to alleviate symptoms from trauma.

“Trauma-informed services are not designed to treat symptoms or syndromes related to sexual or physical abuse.” Harris and Fallot used the analogy of wheelchairs and parking spaces as accommodations for individuals with physical disabilities. Every organization needs to be trauma-informed even though they do not specialize in trauma.

​The figure adjacent shows the geometric increase in the number of trauma-informed articles in journals. In 2001, there was no pioneer group of researchers ready to publish more on it, as only two articles on trauma-informed appeared over 2002-2003. The concept, however, achieved a startling resonance with hundreds of other activist scholars who soon figured out how to leverage the concept within their own special interests.

Analysis
A striking aspect of Harris and Fallot’s argument is that there was no empirical base to justify the postulation of this revolutionary change. There were no case reports of individuals missing out on social services because their trauma was not recognized. Harris and Fallot did describe examples of how trauma victims might perceive roadblocks to receiving care, but they were hypothetical. I’ve worked in many mental health settings for three decades looking at how trauma impacts individuals, including five federal research grants, and their examples don’t ring true.
 
There were no surveys of agencies documenting insensitive customer service interactions that uniquely affected trauma survivors. Even if there was some truth to their imaginary examples, there was no evidence on how commonly they happened.
 
Most importantly, there was no consideration for other potential causes of the individuals’ problems.  Take their imaginary example of a man who wants to seek help for anxiety but is too frightened of crowds and buses to attend a clinic. It is far more likely that his ‘fright’ is due to biologically-based personality disorder features that 'trauma-informed scholars' do not believe in. But in the trauma-informed dogma, every problem is explained by a single cause—trauma.
 
Why Did This Happen?
The phrase ‘trauma-informed services’ is a classic example of the attempts to control language and ideas since neo-Marxist revolutionaries shifted strategy from their failed violent revolutions in the 1960s and 1970s to the ‘long march through the institutions.’ The word ‘trauma’ ticks the box of adopting a therapeutic approach rather than the violent rhetoric and behaviors that had alienated the public. The word ‘informed’  has the surface meaning of neutral education but really means education only about the leftist progressive view of human nature as highly fragile and excludes any biological basis for behaviors. The word ‘services,’ or the interchangeable ‘approaches’ or ‘care,’ obfuscates meaning as benevolent assistance, but means in practice something entirely different of installing a different consciousness that cannot truly help anyone.