Key terms are important vocabulary for understanding the content of the chapters. They will be bolded and defined via an in-text glossary the first time they appear in the chapter.

Key terms for this chapter are:

• adverse childhood experiences: traumas that occur in an individual’s life before they turn 18, which include neglect, abuse, and household difficulties
• acute trauma: a single traumatic incident
• attachment theory: a theory that highlights how attachment patterns are developed from the earliest stages of life
• child abuse: the intentional emotional, negligent, physical, or sexual mistreatment of a child by an adult
• chronic trauma: a traumatic experience that is repeated over a period of time
• complex trauma: a repeated traumatic experience that has been inflicted by a caregiver
• emotional abuse: nonphysical maltreatment of a child through verbal language, including humiliation, threatening, ignoring, and manipulating
• intergenerational trauma: a phenomenon in which the descendants of a person who has experienced a terrifying event show adverse emotional and behavioral reactions to the event that are similar to those of the person himself or herself
• Intersectionality: a perspective that recognizes that individuals are impacted differently based on characteristics such as social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and age and that it is important to look at the intersections of these identities
• intimate partner violence: any incident or pattern of behaviors (physical, psychological, sexual or verbal) used by one partner to maintain power and control over the relationship
• neglect: the failure to meet the basic needs of a child
• physical abuse: any act, completed or attempted, that physically hurts or injures a child, including hitting, kicking, scratching, and pulling hair
• rape culture: a society or environment where there is a culture of disbelief and lack of support for sexual violence survivors through normalizing and trivializing sexual violence despite its prevalent occurrence
• restorative justice: 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.
• sexual abuse: maltreatment, violation, and exploitation where a perpetrator forces, coerces, or threatens a child into sexual contact for sexual gratification and/or financial benefit, including molestation, statutory rape, prostitution, pornography, exposure, incest, and other sexually exploitative activities
• trauma: 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
• trauma-informed care: 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
• trauma-specific practices: 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
• vicarious trauma: 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.