The importance of using trauma-sensitive language

Language is powerful. What we say and how we say it can have a big impact on the people around us – often much more than we realise. This can be particularly true for people who have gone through trauma at some point in their lives. Trauma-sensitive language is part of trauma-informed care, which is an important part of how many health services (particularly mental health), family and community services work with clients and patients.

A number of our projects require a keen understanding and application of trauma-sensitive language. We believe it’s important for everyone to learn about how to use trauma-sensitive language.

What is trauma?

Trauma results from an event, or series of events that a person finds overwhelming or life-changing. The event can affect their psychological development or wellbeing. Individual trauma includes things like domestic and family violence or abuse, experiences of war and other types of violence or abuse.

Trauma can also be intergenerational or historical and collective. According to Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart ‘Cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences’. Examples of intergenerational or historical trauma include colonisation and the Stolen Generations.

What is trauma-informed care?

Trauma-informed care or practice is a framework for how services are delivered. It’s based on knowledge and understanding of how trauma can affect people’s lives. Trauma-informed care means that services are aware and sensitive to a person’s history of trauma and how this might affect their behaviour and the services they need. Without this understanding, services can unintentionally re-traumatise their clients.

Trauma-informed care should involve all staff in an organisation. All staff members are important to a client’s recovery process and need to have skills and sensitivity. Using trauma-sensitive language is an important part of trauma-informed care.

How can you use trauma-sensitive language?

Language matters and words have power. When speaking to someone who has been through trauma, particularly if you are speaking about that trauma, you need to think carefully before you speak. We need to be aware of the words we choose, the tone we use and how we phrase our questions.

When people with post-traumatic stress disorder are faced with trauma-related words, they often have slower response times, showing that these words have more emotional content and that they are delaying the information being processed.

Trauma-sensitive language should help people feel respected, safe and comfortable. You should try not to:

• use labels
• use jargon
• judge people’s experiences and situations.

You should reflect on the individual and their situation when thinking about about what language you should use or avoid. And you should ask the induvial what language they would like you to use.

As an example, the word ‘survivor’ is generally preferred to ‘victim’, but in some instances ‘victim’ can be the preferred term.

We all need to be more aware of how other people’s history and situations might affect them and think about how what we say impacts others.

References

• Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse: The historical trauma response among natives and its relationship with substance abuse: a Lakota illustration
• How to apply trauma-informed care on the Australian Institute of Family Studies website
• The Need for Trauma-Sensitive Language Use in Literacy and Health Literacy Screening Instruments in the Journal of Health Communication
• Trauma and Violence on the SAMHSA website
• What is trauma-informed care? on the Australian Institute of Family Studies website
• What is trauma sensitive language on the Relias website