ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the increasing usage of the term “trauma” within mental health services, with a particular focus on the implications that this holds for women accessing mental health support. The trauma paradigm critiques the biological focus of mainstream psychiatric practices, instead highlighting the importance of adverse life events in shaping mental distress. Therapeutic approaches that draw upon notions of trauma offer obvious improvements to a medication or psychiatric diagnosis approach to mental health, however it is necessary to acknowledge the ways in which trauma-informed therapeutic interactions may continue to be informed by similar assumptions to biomedical psychiatry. For example, notions of women’s trauma following gender-based violence are sometimes shaped by ideas about individual pathology and the assumption that distress is resolvable through professional intervention, thus minimising the importance of social factors. While acknowledging the emancipatory capacities of the trauma paradigm is important, a critical perspective on trauma is proposed as a way of engaging with the potential limitations of the turn towards trauma. The chapter concludes by introducing key terms and debates, including feminist theories, psychocentrism and psychiatric hegemony, and contested notions of social justice within mental health settings.
