A Healing-Centered, Culturally Rooted Approach to Trauma

The intergenerational consequences of such trauma on the proliferation of stressors have been demonstrated. One of the most egregious of these experiences in recent history was the Indian Residential Schools (IRSs), wherein several generations of Indigenous children were forcefully removed from their homes and communities, and were subjected to maltreatment and abuse by residential school staff. Indeed, persistent and protracted ‘micro’ or ‘insidious’ discrimination stressors (Pearlin et al., 2005; Sue et al., 2007) can elicit negative consequences equivalent to those provoked by more severe events (Kubiak, 2005; Anisman et al., 2008; Ellis et al., 2008; Rosen and Lilienfeld, 2008). For instance, an experience of physical assault can be construed as race-based when the perpetrator targets the individual as a result of his/her ethnic group membership. Traumatic events may comprise those that are personal (e.g., abuse, unexpected loss of a loved one) or are collectively experienced (e.g., natural disaster, historical trauma). Members of some groups may be especially likely to encounter discrimination because their membership in targeted groups is visible to others (e.g., based on skin color, language, etc.).

Comparative Analyses Across the Four Studies

By pathologizing homophobiainstead of pathologizing queer identity or other marginalized identities, we canhelp create opportunities to treat not just the symptoms of discrimination andmarginalization (i.e., the coping), but to also address the externalcauses of the pain marginalized people face.1 The proposed reorientation was offered in an attempt to challenge the presumptionthat pathologizing a person’s gender or sexual identity was a valid viewpoint tohold in a therapeutic context, and instead to encourage everyone to takeresponsibility for the pain they may cause themselves and others by denying theinherent value and legitimacy of people in society. But unfortunately for peoplefrom marginalized communities, coping is often a way of life. In this paper, we explore the need to provide peoplestruggling to cope with the skills to tackle not just the personal consequencesof discrimination, but also https://www.umassmed.edu/TransitionsACR/resources/culturally-competent-mhc-to-LGBTQIA/additional-resource-links/ to understand and address the root causes of theirpain, and specifically the ones that lie outside of themselves.

With regard to future research, the case study is the most used method in this review, and it has illustrated many of the processes inherent in implementing TIC. The leadership and management of organizations have an integral role to play in implementation, both in terms of providing a vision, and creating a climate that resources practices, championing TIC and modelling TIC principles. Where stakeholders are regulatory bodies, policy mandates should be conscious of the findings in this review regarding how such regulations may impact on service providers practices, motivations, and resistance. Co-production can extend to other service providers, especially as establishing an inter-agency approach is important, co-production may aid this process. This can be supported with other mechanisms to provide a systemic feedback loop at all levels of the organisation, which should be supported by policy positions.

Like water to a fish, these cultural resources permeate human behavior and the social environment so deeply that they are often taken for granted. Additionally, because health disparities generated by fundamental causes are rooted in inequities in flexible resources, health disparities cannot be eliminated by intervening on a specific disease or risk factor (Phelan et al., 2010). Cultural trauma may overlap with interpersonal trauma, as in culturally motivated physical violence (e.g., genocide, hate crimes) toward members of a minority cultural group.

Study selection.

Corroborating this, the authors of a study in an LGBT+ community in Hong Kong found that sexual minority–specific COVID‐19‐related stressors explained significantly more of the variance in depressive and anxiety symptoms above and beyond other COVID‐19‐related stressors (Suen et al., 2021). Discrimination stressors in sexual and gender minorities (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two‐spirit, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual LGBT2SQIA+ individuals) are similarly of concern. Although none of the studies specifically examine discrimination during the COVID‐19 era, their findings raise essential questions for research, clinical practice, and policy in the complex context of what has become a prolonged pandemic. These papers highlight the need for acceptance of a shared nomenclature and better differentiation of both causal and correlational associations with acute and chronic PTSD, depression, suicide risk, alcohol misuse, and other mental health outcomes. Evidence-based practice and its implications for culturally sensitive treatment.

• Search strings originated in prior systematic reviews on TIC and included modified versions of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination search filters for systematic reviews.
• Experts by experience (trauma survivors) were motivated by the ability of TIC to give a voice to survivors and change the culture in human service systems.
• The University counseling staff reported they were ill-equipped to help a student in Sofia’s “condition.” Sofia denied the presence of severe mental health issues and pleaded with the counseling staff not to report such erroneous findings.

Patient consent for publication

The themes in the first category were “Aggressive behavior” and “Coercion/aggression management”, while those in the second category were “Mental health symptoms”, “Physical health”, and “Self and Well-being” (see Table 4 and Table 5). The second category included measures used to examine service users’ health and wellbeing, either as evaluated by service providers or as reported by the service users themselves. The first category included data that were observational in nature and primarily collected as part of routine documentation or registration in clinical practice. However, some studies did not report which measures were used or employed self-generated questions. We placed more emphasis on trauma and PTSD measures in the review, as we saw them as especially important when examining TIC. Measures related to service providers’ or service users’ evaluations of organizational issues (resources, support, or evaluations of the success of the implementation of TIC) were grouped under organizations.

This brief will be on the necessity of healing-centered two-generation approaches in solutions to food insecurity and poor health. Healing-centered, two-generation approaches intervene in economic insecurity imposed by systemic oppression and begin to heal the lasting impacts of its trauma. In line with the broader efforts to better understand the harmful health impacts of trauma exposure, we present the novel Trauma-Informed Theory of Individual Health Behavior. The epidemic has not been solely defined by risk of contracting the disease, but by increased risk of housing, economic, and health care insecurity. Examining trauma-replicating environments provides a lens through which to understand how specific demographics – such as those living in poverty, those without health insurance, and those who are houseless – face increased barriers to undertaking specific behavioral health promoting choices.