19/01/2026
Across the UK, we are seeing a growing mental health crisis but what we are often calling “disorder” is, in reality, unresolved trauma showing up through the nervous system.
Too many people are still being met with:
• labels without context
• medication without stabilisation
• long waiting lists without support
• repeated retraumatisation across services.
And staff are left carrying the emotional weight of this, often without adequate training, protection, or reflective space.
Trauma-informed care cannot remain a slogan. It must become a system.
What trauma-informed care actually means:
It means shifting the culture from “What’s wrong with you?” to
“What happened to you and what did you need that you didn’t receive?”
Because the most common trauma responses , hypervigilance, dissociation, emotional dysregulation, shame, self-harm, relational instability are not attention-seeking or “difficult behaviours”. They are adaptations.
What we can do now in the UK:
✅ Make trauma-informed training mandatory across NHS services (A&E, GP, maternity, CAMHS, inpatient wards)
✅ Offer nervous system stabilisation as first-line support (grounding, regulation, psychoeducation) while people wait
✅ Expand access to evidence-based trauma therapies including CI and Somatic therapies (EMDR, CT-PTSD/TF-CBT) through funded training and supervision
✅ Protect staff through psychologically safe teams, reflective practice, and moral injury prevention
✅ Build community recovery pathways, not just crisis containment
Healing spreads through safety, connection, and truth and we can build that into systems.
For anyone seeking a trauma-informed recovery community and pathway of healing and accountability, I also recommend:
https://taranon.org
Dr. Jamie Huysman John Stenner Hamel, Jr. Carey Sipp Rachel Alexander
STAR Network™ is a 501(c)(3) foundation dedicated to supporting STARs – Survivors of Toxic Abusive Relationships.
