TRAUMA-INFORMED COUNSELLING AND MENTAL HEALTH: IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELLING

Abstract

Trauma is an inevitable truth of life, preventable, but sometimes wholly unavoidable, as it occurs with or without any early signs. Trauma-informed is to understand the involvement and impact of violence and victimisation in the lives of most clients of mental health, substance abuse, and other services. It is also to apply that understanding in providing services and designing service systems to accommodate trauma survivors' requirements and vulnerabilities and facilitate their participation in treatment. As professionals, counsellors will always encounter a client in trauma at some point. For this reason, counsellors have to possess a basic knowledge of trauma-informed theory and intervention, on how to recognise and assess symptoms of trauma. Therefore, this paper provides an overview of trauma, mental health, trauma-informed counselling and how each has emerged as a counselling speciality in the last few years. Trauma, Trauma-informed counselling, and mental health were defined for the readers, and the principles and elements of the trauma-informed theory were provided. This paper further explained the difference between trauma-informed counselling and trauma-specific interventions. It briefly reviewed trauma history prevalence among consumers of mental health services and described the development of a trauma-informed perspective on mental health. Mental health in Nigeria was reviewed, followed by efforts of leading organisations in the counselling field to increase training opportunities in trauma-informed counselling. An overview of Psychological First Aid (PFA) was provided, and trauma counselling theories were reviewed. The paper concludes with a discussion on vicarious traumatisation, counsellor self-care and its implication on the counselling profession.