3.4 Key Takeaways and Discussion Questions
Included in this section are tools for the reader to refresh and retain the knowledge. A Key Takeaway serves one of three purposes:
- highlighting an especially complex aspect of the chapter;
- summarizing an overarching idea; or
- emphasizing an idea that invites the reader to think about it more deeply, to connect to life experiences, and/or additional learnings.
Discussion Questions are recommended for individual reflection or class discussion.
Key Takeaways
- Traumatic experiences are incredibly common. These include child abuse and neglect, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and household instability (for example, a household member with a mental health issue or substance use disorder).
- Traumatic experiences are especially impactful during childhood because of the adverse effects they can have on cognitive and emotional development. In the long term, these can lead to worse physical and mental health outcomes.
- Experiencing trauma is directly associated with being marginalized more broadly.
- Human service providers work directly with individuals who often have experienced a significant amount of trauma.
- Trauma-informed care is a set of principles that creates safe and inclusive environments to meet the needs of trauma survivors while avoiding retraumatization. These practices can be put into place in a wide range of contexts.
- Trauma-specific practices aim to directly address and reconceptualize trauma. These practices are more specialized and require additional training. This means that not every human service professional is qualified to administer these treatments. Organizations and agencies that provide trauma-specific practices should still take a trauma-informed approach to their work.
- Because of the large amount of secondary trauma that human service professionals encounter in their work, it is important to take preventative steps to avoid negative impacts of this form of trauma. These steps can include ensuring your organization is trauma-informed for its staff, engaging in self-care practices, and seeking treatment if symptoms arise.
- Restorative practice and restorative justice are becoming a key part of the work that we do as human service providers. These are related, just as trauma-informed practices and trauma-informed care are connected. One is a system, and the other is an individual way of supporting clients within systems.
Discussion Questions
- Why is it important for human service professionals to have an understanding of trauma?
- What kinds of self-care practices do you see yourself engaging in as a human service professional? How do you think that these will help you address the impact of vicarious trauma?
- When you think of the phrase “rest as resistance,” what comes to mind?
Comprehension Check
Licenses and Attributions
Open Content, Original
“Key Takeaways and Discussion Questions” by Alexandra Olsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Revised by Martha Ochoa-Leyva.
the intentional emotional, negligent, physical, or sexual mistreatment of a child by an adult
the failure to meet the basic needs of a child
any incident or pattern of behaviors (physical, psychological, sexual or verbal) used by one partner to maintain power and control over the relationship
results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being
a collection of approaches that translate the science of the neurological and cognitive understanding of how trauma is processed in the brain into informed clinical practice for providing services that address the symptoms of trauma
practices that directly treat the trauma that an individual has experienced and any co-occurring disorders that they developed as a result of this trauma
action to preserve and improve one’s own physical and mental health.
an alternative approach to criminal justice that centers the survivor, taking into account what they need to experience healing. It also involves the participation of the perpetrator, requiring them to recognize the harm they did in the process of holding them accountable.
secondary traumatic stress, which is an occupational challenge for people working in the human services field due to their continuous exposure to victims of trauma and violence.