We all want gold standard care for all our patients –right? We want the best for people. So if we unpick that assumption a little further what should gold standard look like? Often when such questions are asked you need to read a long diatribe of words to get to the point. Not in this case. In this case, it’s simple – Trauma informed care.

Here’s a fact to kick us off; - “Notably, people in contact with mental health services who have been sexually or physically abused in childhood typically have longer and more frequent hospital admissions, are prescribed more medication, are more likely to self-harm and are more likely to attempt to kill themselves than people without experiences of childhood abuse” (Read et al., 2007).

This one fact alone should be enough to make us all stop and question what we do and how we do it, after all everyone want to reduce admissions in this day and age of cutbacks.

As a peer support worker, I have my own lived experience of trauma – which is something I am not ready to share yet, but it’s there, and mental health professionals who work with me need to know it exists and understand clearly that it may explain the reasons why I do certain things and behave in certain ways. And so it is for others who have been through traumatic experiences.

So what am I asking for? Well really I just want to spread trauma informed care like an infection through the NHS – we need to get talking and sharing good practice. We need to highlight what works well for people and give more service users/people experiencing distress opportunity for their voice to be heard. We need to all create a culture of openness where nobody feels unsafe while accessing services. We need to work towards ensuring that services themselves don’t contribute to harm or distress – we must not re-traumatise people. We must start to understand and accept that what constitutes trauma for one does not mean it will be for another.

I want all of the mental health services to ‘see through a trauma lens’, meaning that there is an understanding and acknowledgement of the links between trauma and mental health.

We need to recognise that trauma may exist and that we need to help people to feel safe. A paradigm shift from what’s wrong with you? To what’s happened to you? A focus on what is strong, not what is wrong. The peer support movement is based on mutuality, trust and hope, and if we can give this to our service users then we will be one step forward towards gold standard care.

Blog written by Clare Knighton This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. @knightonstar