A large proportion of people who experience mental health crises carry histories of trauma — from childhood abuse, colonial harms, violence, or even previous interactions with police or emergency responders. If crisis intervention ignores that context, the very systems designed to “help” can re-trigger trauma instead of reducing it.
What Trauma-Informed Means
Safety first: Prioritize creating a calm, predictable environment to reduce fear.
Choice and voice: Give individuals as much control as possible during interventions.
Trustworthiness: Be transparent about what’s happening and why.
Collaboration: Work with, not over, the person in crisis.
Empowerment: Recognize strengths, not just risks or deficits.
Canadian Context
Police training: Trauma-informed approaches are unevenly applied, often optional rather than required.
Health systems: Some provinces promote trauma-informed care in hospitals, but integration with crisis teams is patchy.
Indigenous communities: Trauma-informed models are essential given intergenerational and colonial trauma, yet funding for culturally grounded crisis teams remains limited.
Pilot programs: A handful of cities have tested trauma-informed de-escalation with promising results.
The Challenges
Culture clash: Law enforcement models focus on compliance and control, which can conflict with trauma-sensitive practices.
Training gaps: Trauma-informed care requires depth, not checklists — but many responders only get a short course.
Systemic blind spots: Trauma is treated as an individual issue, not recognized as shaped by poverty, racism, and colonialism.
Resource strain: In high-pressure calls, responders may revert to force-first methods.
The Opportunities
Cross-training: Equip police, EMS, and crisis line staff with practical trauma-informed strategies.
Mobile health teams: Shift first response from law enforcement toward health-based, trauma-sensitive teams.
Policy integration: Make trauma-informed practice a baseline requirement in crisis response systems.
Community partnerships: Draw from lived experience and culturally rooted knowledge to refine approaches.
The Bigger Picture
Crisis doesn’t erase trauma — it amplifies it. A trauma-informed approach recognizes that the way we respond today shapes whether someone will ever feel safe asking for help tomorrow.
The Question
If trauma is at the heart of so many crises, why isn’t trauma-informed practice at the heart of every response? Which leaves us to ask: how can Canada redesign crisis systems so that they heal, rather than deepen, the scars people already carry?
Trauma-Informed Crisis Response
Why Trauma Matters in Crisis
A large proportion of people who experience mental health crises carry histories of trauma — from childhood abuse, colonial harms, violence, or even previous interactions with police or emergency responders. If crisis intervention ignores that context, the very systems designed to “help” can re-trigger trauma instead of reducing it.
What Trauma-Informed Means
Canadian Context
The Challenges
The Opportunities
The Bigger Picture
Crisis doesn’t erase trauma — it amplifies it. A trauma-informed approach recognizes that the way we respond today shapes whether someone will ever feel safe asking for help tomorrow.
The Question
If trauma is at the heart of so many crises, why isn’t trauma-informed practice at the heart of every response? Which leaves us to ask:
how can Canada redesign crisis systems so that they heal, rather than deepen, the scars people already carry?