Hospital-based behavioral health departments work tirelessly everyday to keep communities healthy and safe. However, many healthcare systems experience symptoms that transform healing spaces into re-traumatizing environments for patients as well as leadership, physicians, and staff. Patients with complex needs, larger system pressures, changes in leadership, and staff turnover all can evoke fear and stress, resulting in punitive and non-relational interactions. This kind of climate unwittingly replicates the abusive dynamics patients and staff may have experienced in their own lives, leading to poor outcomes.  

Vicarious trauma, a form of secondary trauma, is an inescapable effect of working with trauma survivors. It is an occupational hazard and may be the single most important factor impacting the success or failure of trauma work. Organizations need to address vicarious trauma as an ethical imperative.  

Sign up for our free sampler session on Vicarious Trauma and receive a replay of Trauma-Informed Care basics!

The Traumatic Stress Institute is pleased to share an upcoming event that may be of interest to our community. Origins Training is launching the Resilience Learning Community—a new virtual space focused on exploring resilience practices within organizations and communities.

2024 brought to an end a 19-month initiative by three Connecticut-based Arc organizations to implement systemwide change to trauma-informed care. In contrast to many organizations' approaches to trauma-informed change, The Arc of Litchfield County, CCARC, MidState Arc took to heart the maxim of Dr. Sandra Bloom, one of the grandmothers of the TIC movement:

This year marks a new era in the history of the Risking Connection (RC) training model. The Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) completed the most comprehensive revision of the training model since its inception in 2000. The revisions over the course of RC’s 24-year history have aspired to remain faithful to the principles of the original curriculum while reflecting advancements in the always-evolving trauma field, as well as ensuring the training is relevant to a wide variety of sectors serving trauma survivors.

Phew, this is a hard one for me: It is with profound appreciation, sadness, and good wishes that we announce the retirement of Mary Jo Harwood, LSW, DNCCM from the Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI). Her last day will be June 10^th.

In December 2022, three Connecticut-based Arc organizations embarked on a journey together to implement trauma-informed care (TIC) – not just with clinicians, not just a one-time training – but each as a whole organization aspiring to embed TIC into the fabric of their culture.

It is widely accepted that the roots of trauma-informed care (TIC) as a concept and as a movement grew in the soil conceived and nurtured by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a bureau of the US federal government. In the years since the Dare to Vision conference in 1994, SAMHSA has produced three seminal publications that have defined, outlined, and tracked the evolution of the theory and practice of a trauma-informed approach (TIA).

As ABA and IDD providers recognize the centrality of trauma in the lives of those they support, the natural next question is, “So what do we do about it?”