By Andis Robeznieks, American Medical Association, March 19, 2021
Trauma is a harmful and costly public health problem resulting from violence, abuse, neglect, loss, disaster, war and other emotionally harmful experiences and is an almost universal experience of people with mental and substance-use disorders (SUDs), according to the U.S Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Racism and systems of oppression can also be a cause. SAMHSA’s guidance notes that individual trauma “occurs in a context of community, whether the community is defined geographically as in neighborhoods; virtually as in a shared identity, ethnicity or experience.”
Traditional medical models still often fail to acknowledge how a patient’s personal and societal traumas—including gender issues or cultural and racial history—can affect their health, said mental health advocate Nadia Richardson, PhD, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions.
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