Edited by Nancy Poole and Lorraine Greaves
Most people accessing mental health and addiction services have experienced trauma. For those working in community services, treatment agencies and hospitals, providing "trauma-informed care" requires an understanding of the effects of trauma, and of how to create programs, spaces and policies that place priority on trauma survivors' safety, choice and control.
Becoming Trauma Informed describes trauma-informed practice at the individual, organizational and systemic levels. This multi-authored collection brings together the voices of those who have integrated trauma-informed principles into various mental health and addiction treatment and social service environments, and of the diverse groups with which they work.
Becoming Trauma Informed is an important resource for those who are working, or who are planning to work as addiction and mental health practitioners and program and system planners.
$39.95 | Purchase a copy from the CAMH Store.
About the editors
Nancy Poole, MA, PhD candidate is the director of the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health. Nancy is well known for her collaborative work on research, training and policy initiatives on trauma informed practice with governments and organizations on local, provincial, national and international levels. She is currently leading system change initiatives and the collaborative development of resources on trauma-informed practice with several provinces and territories in Canada.
Lorraine Greaves, PhD, is senior investigator at the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health and its founding executive director. Previously, she was the founding director of the Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children in Ontario. She leads IMPART, a pan-Canadian training program for researchers in gender, addiction and intersections with mental health, violence and trauma. She is internationally recognized for integrating gender and equity into policy and practice and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa for her work advancing women’s health.
Reviews and endorsements
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about trauma-informed approaches. Becoming Trauma Informed is inspired by a broad systems approach that builds on assumptions that trauma, whether diagnosed or not, recognized or not, can determine life course and engagement with and outcome of health services. As the editors of this book conclude, "given the scope of the adaptations needed across settings and populations, the structures for learning about trauma and its implications need to be innovative and multiple." Reading this book is a great start!
The Canadian Women’s Health Network (CWHN)
While the text is theoretically grounded, the authors convey information in a way that is accessible to wider audiences. It provides critical information for those working in the field by underscoring the relationship between past experiences and current functioning. Becoming Trauma Informed delivers a deeply informative look into the field of trauma therapy.
York University’s Trauma & Mental Health Report (a weekly online mental-health magazine published out of York University in Toronto). Read the full review.
I found this book both exciting and inspiring. It should be read by practitioners, administrators, researchers and educators who work in mental health, addictions, child welfare, violence against women; in fact, by everyone who labours to improve the lives of people who are hurting. The content provides state of the art knowledge about the transformation in service delivery and improved outcomes that occur when helping professionals and helping systems are trauma informed.
Carol A. Stalker, PhD, RSW
Professor and Associate Dean, PhD program, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON
This is an ambitious and powerful book, whose editors and authors have more than risen to meet the challenge of demonstrating to their colleagues creative ways to think about delivering care through the lens of trauma. Every health and mental health practitioner should read this book, whether they believe themselves to be working with trauma survivors or not. The compassionate, thoughtful and evidence-based information in this volume will improve quality of care for all patients and clients.
Laura S. Brown, PhD, ABPP
Author of Cultural Competence in Trauma Therapy: Beyond the Flashback, and Director, Fremont Community Therapy Project, Seattle, WA