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Medical Directors’ Recommendations on Trauma-informed Care for Persons with Serious Mental Illness

Source: National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors

Resource Type: Documents and Publications

Focus Population: People who have experienced Trauma, People with Serious Mental Illness (SMI)

Topics: Mental Health Treatment, Trauma-informed

Trauma-informed approaches allow clinicians to understand better what is driving a person’s behavior. This comprehensive approach gives clinicians and organizations a holistic snapshot of the patient’s challenges, offering a greater understanding of the scope of services the person may need immediately and in the future. It also helps to identify triggers that can cause retraumatization and what to address to build patient resiliency. People are usually admitted to a forensic setting because they behaved violently. This paper describes research related to trauma history and symptoms; evidence-based, trauma-informed therapies; training for health care and law enforcement; and more.