Trauma Healing: A Mixed Methods Study of Personal and Community-Based Healing

Trauma survivors' beliefs are important toward a new social response to trauma-a response that reduces help-seeking barriers and invites and supports healing. This exploratory, mixed-methods study examined trauma survivors' perspectives about key elements of trauma healing. An online and paper-and-pencil survey (n = 82) asked participants to describe what hindered and what helped regarding how people in their lives, including mental health providers, responded to their abuse. Five central themes emerged: what hurt, what helped or would have helped, experience with the mental health system, recommendations to the mental health system, and what participants need in the mental health system. The majority of participants reported that they never or rarely received help or protection at the time of their abuse, and most were first abused early in childhood. This study supports the notion that trauma survivors' insights should be central in the development of community-based healing models.