Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Barriers to Trauma-Informed Mental Health Systems: Beliefs and Medical Necessity

from Trauma Transformation Peer Support:

One of the challenges for implementing a trauma-informed system is an issue of etiology – that is, the etiology of mental illness.

I know: debating cause of mental illness is not very helpful, especially when I just want peer support. Debating cause isn’t helpful when I am trying to learn how to work again, or trying to get up enough courage to go to the gym full of strangers, or stop hating myself. But I’m afraid that we will have to share uneasy proximity to the question because it is the often unspoken decision people have already made about what causes mental illness that has created so many broken state mental health systems. What we believe about the illness informs the services the system provides.

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