By Darcia F. Narvaez, Psychology Today, March 15, 2020
Trauma-informed care has become of interest across the nation. The interest emerged from an increased understanding of trauma’s effects on individual health and wellbeing, including the first massive study of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) among a California sample of white, middle-class elderly patients. The higher one’s scores on ACES measures, the worse one’s health outcomes in adulthood (Felitti & Anda, 2005).
Dr. Sandra Bloom has been a leader in trauma-informed healing. She situates human development in secure attachment, calling it an “operating system for human beings” (Bloom, 2014, p. 58). But when trauma or other forms of toxic stress take place in childhood, it’s like a computer virus in the development of the child’s psychobiology. The child’s development gets thwarted or twisted in such a way that it requires intervention healing—or else the individual’s trajectory for the future carries and spreads the virus on to others and to subsequent generations. Bloom identifies the virus as violence.
Noting that many of the providers in helping cultures (e.g., social workers, therapists, nurses, and their assistants) themselves experienced childhood toxic stress, Bloom developed an attachment-based, trauma-informed approach to organizational culture.
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