Trauma-Informed Care

topic

Trauma-informed care (TIC) is the organizational and clinical framework that recognizes the widespread prevalence of trauma, understands its systemic effects on health and behavior, integrates trauma knowledge into policies and practices, and actively avoids re-traumatization — through the six principles of safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, and cultural/historical/gender sensitivity — applied across healthcare, education, social services, criminal justice, and organizational systems.

Role

Trauma-informed care is the systemic response to the ACE research finding that the majority of people in any healthcare, educational, or social service system are carrying significant trauma history that shapes their engagement with that system — making healthcare that ignores trauma history not only incomplete but potentially re-traumatizing when it inadvertently replicates the power dynamics, violation of bodily autonomy, or trust betrayal of the original trauma. Most healthcare systems are not trauma-informed — with approximately 60–90% of people in some clinical populations having significant trauma histories that are unassessed, unknown to their providers, and active in shaping both their health outcomes and their treatment engagement.

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