Hello there.  Welcome.  How are you?  Well, I hope.  This guide was initially created as a resource for the Fall 2021 Faculty Inservice breakout with Krisi Hagen and myself, Nic Ashman.  You are thinking, "oh, that was some time ago..."  Updates are  made periodically as the conversation around trauma unfolds.  What does that impact you?  Please check back regularly for those updates.  Now, let's dive in.

What is Trauma?  Per SAMSA:

"an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being."  Further, "Trauma has no boundaries with regard to age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Trauma is a common experience for adults and children in American communities, and it is especially common in the lives of people with mental and substance use disorders. For this reason, the need to address trauma is increasingly seen as an important part of effective behavioral health care and an integral part of the healing and recovery process."

- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, retrieved August 2021.

"Trauma2" by Nic Ashman is licensed under CC BY 4.0.  This image was created using Word Art.

Here are some quick statistics involving our current and incoming college students, with original links (from the source text) left intact for you to follow for more information:

• 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year
• 1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year
• 1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year
• 50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24
• Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10-14 

- Data is from National Alliance on Mental Illness's "Mental Health By the Numbers" webpage, collected June 2024.

Mental health and illness are linked to a number of other factors that may impact our students:

• 1 in 5 of college students say their mental health has significantly worsened under COVID-19
• The rate of unemployment is higher among U.S. adults who have mental illness (7.4%) compared to those who do not (4.6%)
• High school students with significant symptoms of depression are more than twice as likely to drop out compared to their peers. This is also true in college settings.
• More than half of students (55%) say that they would not know where to go if they or someone they knew needed professional mental health services right away.

- Data is from National Alliance on Mental Illness's "Mental Health By the Numbers" webpage, collected June 2024.

These statistics are just a small glimpse at a much larger conversation around mental health and trauma is often interwoven into into the narrative. So how does a Trauma Informed Approach integrate into the conversation? And what does it mean in your classrooms? This guide was created to help you understand that. Use that tabs at the top of the page to navigate to the next section.