What is Trauma?
Trauma is defined as any experience in which a person’s internal resources (skills or coping strategies that already exist within the individual) are not adequate to cope with external stressors. Traumatic life experiences can include domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse, death or loss of a loved one, bullying, historical trauma, acts or threats of terrorism, witnessing or experiencing community violence, experiences of living with poverty, abandonment, or neglect. Trauma can occur at all stages of life and the impacts of childhood trauma can persist into adulthood. As the number of traumatic childhood events increases, so does the risk for serious health impacts (Davidson, 2017). For more information about childhood and trauma, please see our infosheet on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
According to Elliot & Urquiza (2006) while previous understandings of trauma would consider the specific traumatic event(s), evolved understandings of trauma have shown researchers that one event can be experienced differently depending on a wide variety of variables including the community an individual comes from and their socio-political context. Experiences of trauma are as diverse and nuanced as the populations we serve on campuses. It is crucial to recognize that what might be traumatic to one person may not be traumatic for another, and vice versa.
Over 75% of the Canadian population has reported an exposure to one or more traumatic events (Van Ameringen et al., 2008). Most of these individuals reported exposure to multiple traumatic events. As we currently live in a period where sexual violence, hate crimes, suicide, and mass shootings dominate the news, and there are increasing experiences of oppression, racism, discrimination, witnessing violence, unsafe living conditions etc., it is not shocking that many individuals are impacted by trauma (Tebes et al., 2019). Furthermore, “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous, and asexual youth tend to experience higher rates of trauma compared to their heterosexual, cisgender, and gender-conforming peers” (Van Bavel & Conde, 2022, p. 6). For more information on 2SLGBTQ+ Students please see out toolkit.
