Trauma Informed Mental Health Treatment

How to Get the Mental Health Services You Need to Heal

When it comes to seeking help for your mental health concerns, you need to make sure that you are offered the services you really need. Many people experience trauma, even if they do not yet classify it as such. As a result, you should look for providers and facilities that offer trauma informed mental health treatment.

Emerald Isle Health and Recovery offer a robust treatment plan not just for those who struggle with substance abuse. Rather, we offer a trauma-informed approach that colors every service we provide. From trauma-related prevention to providing a supportive environment for our clients, we can help you to heal.

What Exactly is Trauma Informed Care?

Have you gone through something that was extraordinarily difficult for you? Most people who have mental health concerns find that many of their struggles stem from this traumatic event. Seeking treatment for your pressing mental health needs is important, but the treatment also needs to acknowledge the importance of these events on your day-to-day functioning.

Trauma-informed care keeps the prevalence of these events in mind when defining a treatment plan for you. A clinician may correctly assume that most people have gone through some type of traumatic experience. Therefore, they can approach the current symptoms through the lens of this situation.

A solid trauma-informed treatment plan places an emphasis on healing without the need to re-traumatize the individual. Instead of waiting on trauma to be disclosed throughout the process of regular therapy sessions, the mental health provider often makes the assumption that some type of trauma has taken place.

To this end, they might implement a trauma-informed approach that screens all clients for trauma prior to starting therapy. There is an emphasis placed on how what happened has influenced the person’s current situation, symptoms, and possibly even substance abuse issues.

How Trauma-Informed Care Works in Therapeutic Relationships

If you are thinking of enrolling in behavioral health services with Emerald Isle, then you may want to consider looking for a trauma-informed care approach. Many mental disorders and mental health concerns can be tied to trauma. A skilled therapist or the right clinician will focus on treating the entire person instead of just the events that happened to them.

It is important to note that trauma often influences your overall beliefs about the world and even who you are as a person. Mental health services administration should take these symptoms into consideration when developing a response and treatment plan.

As a result of the complex need for a treatment improvement protocol for trauma-informed care, our clinicians rely on a framework that improves outcomes.

Safety in Therapy is Paramount

Before you can fully participate in mental health services, you need to know that you are going to be safe within the four walls of the therapy room. This might mean that you need to put some protections in place to cover your physical and emotional safety. You should feel at ease in the therapy room.

If something upsets you or reminds you of the trauma that you have been through, talk with your therapist about changing it.

Control Over the Therapeutic Services

Many people who engage in trauma-informed care feel out of control because they could not impact the events that they went through. In therapy sessions, you should always have control over how deep you want to go. In trauma-informed care, you know that you have rights within that room.

You always have the choice whether or not to participate in an assignment, though it should be noted that you will have responsibilities in the therapeutic relationship as well.

Collaboration on the Treatment Planning

This tenet of the trauma-informed care approach is closely tied to the last one. Under this guiding principle, you will have the ability to join with your clinician to develop a robust treatment plan. This allows you to take some of the power back from where trauma may have robbed you.

Collaborating with your clinicians also means that you can take time to evaluate how things are going. If you think that you could dive deeper into a different aspect of your treatment, this is a good time to bring it up.

Setting Clear Boundaries in the Therapy Room

Many people with mental health concerns can struggle to establish clear boundaries with the people in their lives. This tendency can spill over into the therapeutic relationship as well. With trauma-informed care, your therapist takes this into account and allows you to practice in the safety of the treatment room.

You will set and learn how to respect interpersonal boundaries, starting with your clinician.

Building Skills to Assist in Other Areas of Life

At first, a trauma-informed approach may appear to be about processing the past. However, it also entails making sure that you know how to function in the future. A skilled clinician is always looking to the future. They want you to build up your skills so that you can participate more fully in your life.

With each session, you should feel a little bit stronger and more empowered.

Mental Health Services Administration for Trauma-Informed Care

While the healing that takes place in the therapy room is often the focal point, it is also key to look at mental health services administration in the treatment center as a whole. It starts at the highest position held in the treatment center and trickles down to even the most entry-level workers.

In this top-down approach, you can rest assured that everyone involved in your care has the experience and mindset to help you heal. The goal is not to remind you of your experienced trauma while providing trauma-informed care. It starts with the leadership of the facility and flows into policy, the physical environment, and the myriad ways that clinical staff is involved in the day-to-day services offered.

It also ensures that therapists are engaged with every treatment provider across the board. They should be collaborating with every team member involved in your treatment for a comprehensive approach to managing your mental health or substance abuse.

A qualified center also engages in the assessment for trauma, ongoing training for their staff, and providing a robust offering of treatments.

Helpful Practices for Trauma-Informed Care

When it comes to your treatment strategies, you should be able to ask questions about how the flow of your experience will go. A clinician who has experience with trauma-informed care should outline a few common tenets of treatment, including:

Giving Clients a Voice for Better Engagement in Treatment

Oftentimes, someone who has been through traumatic experiences feels that they have no voice. A trauma-informed approach aims to rectify this situation. Your clinician should seek your input on the exercises, direction, and success of the therapeutic model.

Engagement in the development of a treatment plan is a core component of trauma-informed care practice. It is both empowering and liberating for someone who has lived through trauma to feel like they have a voice in what comes next for them.

Early Screening to Address Trauma As Soon As Possible

Even if you present for a different mental illness, it is important that your clinician assess you for trauma as early in the process as possible. Every client should undergo this testing. Some people have been through a trauma but do not label it as such. As a result, it may go undetected even though it influences the way they interact within the therapeutic treatment services.

There should still be freedom and flexibility for clients to disclose only what they want to. In a new relationship with a clinician, they may not feel comfortable divulging all of the details of their trauma history. A cursory glance at adverse childhood experiences or traumatic experiences is all that is necessary at this early stage of treatment.

Keep in mind that it is important not to re-traumatize yourself in sharing the details of your trauma with a new clinician.

Focus on the Whole Person Instead of on Trauma

If you experienced trauma, you might have found that there is some stigma attached to receiving care for this experience. Lifting the stigma of these experiences is key to moving past trauma. Your clinician should aim to help you understand the language surrounding your experiences without focusing too strongly on the event itself.

Instead, you want a provider that is going to zero in on how it impacts you as an entire person. The emphasis should be not on what happened to you but on how it affects your day-to-day life.

This helps clients to build rapport with their therapists, minimizes the possibility of being re-traumatized in the therapy room, and can even increase the likelihood of follow-through with the treatment plan. At Emerald Isle, we always take your personal experiences into consideration when developing a treatment plan so that you receive the best care possible.

Trauma-Informed Care Approaches for Effective Treatment

If you are thinking about how trauma-informed care can help you with your mental illness, it is important to know that there is more than one approach. From prolonged exposure therapy to EMDR, you and your clinician have options that can help you to experience healing.

Consider how much time you want to invest in your treatment and what level of comfort you have with the following methods. At Emerald Isle, you will find that our clinicians have the experience you need to feel comfortable trusting them through the process of identifying the perfect therapeutic fit for you.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy for Real World Testing

Prolonged exposure therapy is one aspect of a comprehensive trauma-informed care plan. It typically takes 15 sessions or less with the goal being to help you process and tolerate the feelings that come up surrounding your trauma.

You will learn some skills from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) such as breathing exercises. These coping skills are great to have in your toolbox for when discomfort arises both in the therapy room and out.

Finally, you will put your new skills to the test in a real experience that reminds you of the trauma.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing to Minimize PTSD Symptoms

If you struggle with spontaneous and intrusive thoughts surrounding your trauma, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a helpful tool. Using a unique approach tied to eye movements, tones, or tapping, you can work through some of the most intense memories you experience. It takes some of the power out of your trauma-related memories.

While lesser known than prolonged exposure therapy and talk therapy, EMDR can have a profound impact on trauma. It improves PTSD diagnoses, symptoms, and other trauma-related symptoms.

Trauma-Focused CBT to Correct Negative Thinking

One of the basic tenets of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is that it changes how your thoughts and feelings impact your actions. By examining the interplay between these three categories, you can start to correct distorted or negative thought patterns that limit your healing.

Trauma-focused CBT gives you the support you need to explore the ways that trauma influenced your thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is particularly helpful for those who experienced trauma as children. Much like prolonged exposure therapy, this tends to be a relatively short course of treatment.

Moving Toward the Trauma-Informed Care Approach

No matter what type of mental disorders or substance abuse you might be coping with, you may find that it is related to traumatic events. Our health care providers at Emerald Isle Health and Recovery can help you cope with trauma-related symptoms through our trauma-informed practices.

We set you up for success at every level and provide several types of therapy that give you the best chance of healing. If you have been searching for a facility to implement trauma-informed care, give us a call today to see how we can help you.