SAMHSA has defined what trauma-informed means -- here's a link to the report in which they did so. It's a good guide; whether and how organizations use it is another matter.
And something else to consider: the trauma-informed/resilience-building approach is also being used in education, with early measured and remarkable results; juvenile justice, with some early stunning results; criminal justice, with stunning results; communities, with stunning results; corrections; pediatrics; business; etc.
At the foundation of using trauma-informed/resilience-building tools is ACEs science (science is not medicine or a medical model, by the way). ACEs science includes:
- the epidemiology of adverse childhood experiences (the ACE Study and subsequent surveys that expand the types of ACEs),
- the effects of toxic stress from ACEs on children's developing brains (neurobiology),
- the short- and long-term health consequences of the effects of toxic stress from ACEs,
- the effects of toxic stress from ACEs on our genes (epigenetics, leading to historical and intergenerational trauma),
- and resilience research that looks at the effects of implementing trauma-informed AND resilience-building practices on individuals, families, organizations, systems, and communities.
To your great point, Corinna, of other ways to "look at this stuff", there are social service agencies and people in the faith-based community who are educating people about ACEs science. These are people with high ACE scores who are having significant problems in their lives coping with the effects of toxic stress and could have used assistance earlier in their lives but didn't receive it because, also to your point, our communities aren't set up as supportive, self-healing communities. Many of these people are in the most dire of circumstances: in prison or just out of prison, in a rescue mission, etc....in other words, society's given up on them, is blaming them for their troubles, and they've given up on themselves. When people learn about ACEs science, they learn four important things:
- They weren't born bad.
- What happened to them as children wasn't their fault.
- They coped as well as they could (alcohol, meth, violence, food, etc.), given that they weren't given healthy options.
- They can change.
That's what they say. And with this knowledge, many of them go on to change their lives, and live happier and healthier. That doesn't mean that practices such as EMDR or somatic therapies or yoga or gardening or volunteering at a food bank or joining a singing group or equine therapy or SuperBetter tools aren't useful, but people are in a better place ("I can change...what I experienced was normal...I don't have to feel this way the rest of my life") to try different things that help build resilience in their lives or help them get unstuck. And they can contribute to building the community supports that are necessary to create self-healing communities.
I agree that our traditional models of medicine, including psychiatry, and psychology focus too much on managing an illness (just as any other sector focuses on managing problems instead of creating and managing solutions) and not enough on healing and improved outcomes, and, the good news is that they're starting to change, and that healing is being integrated into every sector of our communities. I've heard people in every sector (education, faith-based, pediatrics, family practice, psychiatry, youth justice, corrections, etc.) who have learned about ACEs science say: "I've been doing it all wrong...". One of the important changes is that the healers who are changing understand that they bring their own ACEs to any interaction, and they understand that assisting and empowering someone to heal themselves has better outcomes.