by Michael Arevalo, Psy.D., PMP on March 4, 2025
Trauma is exceedingly — and unfortunately — common in the United States. Abuse, discrimination, violence, neglect, racism, economic struggles, living in food deserts, even living through the pandemic has resulted in widespread trauma that many continue to work through.
These and other types of trauma affect our physical, mental, and emotional health and impede our ability to seek out and participate in care.
Meanwhile, reported mental health conditions have increased dramatically in the past few years, following a near-30-year decline, and they’re projected to continue increasing in the years to come. Within this environment, it’s critical for providers to adopt trauma-informed care practices to effectively help their clients heal.
What Is Trauma-Informed Care?
According to the National Council for Behavioral Health, a staggering 223 million people in the U.S. — or about 70% of all adults — have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives. Of clients who seek out behavioral health care, 90% have experienced trauma.
Trauma is a widespread, pervasive issue that requires providers to adapt accordingly. The Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Resource Center notes that this adaptation means shifting the clinical focus from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?” More specifically, it means reworking clinical and organizational practices to focus on healing, rather than treating, clients.
In that way, according to the Resource Center, trauma-informed care seeks to accomplish the following:
- Acknowledge trauma as a widespread and impactful issue
- Recognize signs of trauma within client histories and care processes
- Infuse policies and practices with a trauma-informed lens and information
- Actively avoid retraumatizing clients while they’re in a provider’s care
The Six Principles of Trauma-Informed Care
As the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) notes, “Creating a safe environment, for both physical and emotional safety, requires intentionally and comprehensively incorporating trauma-informed principles and practices into an organization’s structure, service delivery, and culture.” An advanced electronic health record (EHR) can bolster both the mindset and operational shifts needed for clinics to effectively incorporate
Here’s a breakdown of SAMHSA’s six principles of trauma-informed care and how the right EHR can help support each principle.
1. Safety
Feeling stressed and unsafe in a clinical space can activate trauma responses and make it difficult for clients to participate in care. In fact, research shows that feeling safe is critical to performing executive functions like making decisions, thinking creatively, remembering, and being cognitively flexible — all abilities that are essential to behavioral healthcare.
Safety is the first of six principles of trauma-informed care because it forms the foundation for effective treatment and healing. A robust EHR with advanced features like risk assessment tools, trauma-history indicators, and real-time symptom tracking can help clinicians identify patterns of distress that might otherwise go unnoticed. Features such as these can better ensure client safety during and beyond clinical appointments. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools that analyze provider notes can flag subtle signs of trauma-related conditions, enabling clinicians to proactively address safety concerns such as self-harm risks, avoidance behaviors, or medication sensitivities related to past traumatic experiences.
EHRs can also help ensure safety across the care continuum, enabling providers within different specialties to securely share client data and alert one another to potential trauma triggers. This more holistic approach allows the entire care network to work collaboratively to ensure clients stay on track with treatment plans, avoid bad medication interactions, and do not experience further trauma in the healthcare space.
2. Trustworthiness and Transparency
Safety is paramount in behavioral health care, but safety depends on trust. Studies show that trust is essential to driving effective health outcomes and enabling clients to adapt to vulnerable situations during care — a vital component of behavioral health care.
EHRs help clinicians build trust by providing transparent, accessible communication at every step of the care journey. Clients can use their custom patient portal to see a provider’s availability, schedule telehealth or in-person visits, securely communicate with their clinicians, collaborate on treatment planning/treatment interventions, access educational materials, review records, and more.
The portal offers a one-stop shop for client engagement, and it helps clients see that nothing within the care environment is hidden from them. That enhanced transparency helps build the trust necessary for effective trauma-informed care practices.
3. Peer Support
Sharing lived experiences, having a safe space to bring up concerns with like-minded individuals, building healing relationships with others — these are all examples of trauma-informed care practices. And according to Texas Health and Human Services, these kinds of peer support can help clients heal and minimize “the impact of secondary traumatic stress.”
The right technologies can facilitate peer support and help connect peer groups with clinical providers. For example, providers can use an advanced EHR to identify open availability in local peer support groups, then monitor a client’s progress through and participation in those groups. This insight enables the provider to gain a more holistic understanding of the client’s needs and effectively coordinate care with peer support specialists.
By leveraging technology to expand peer support access, providers strengthen the social support networks that are vital for trauma recovery, ensuring clients receive both clinical guidance and community-based healing opportunities.
4. Collaboration and Mutuality
Collaboration is one of the six principles of trauma-informed care because it’s essential to both provider-client and provider-provider relationships. When everyone involved in the care journey collaborates effectively, research shows, clients achieve better outcomes and receive more timely treatment and support.
Top EHRs facilitate collaboration at every turn. A behavioral health provider, for example, can use the EHR platform to discuss treatment plans, coordinate care, or share care plans with primary care physicians, specialists, and mental health crisis intervention services.
The best EHRs also allow providers across the coordinated network to create bespoke workflows that support productivity, communication, and collaboration. With greater access to one another, providers can ensure their trauma-informed care practices deliver the best client results.
5. Empowerment, Voice, and Choice
Trauma often leaves individuals feeling powerless and unheard. In trauma-informed care, empowerment is not just about making choices. It’s about restoring a sense of agency, dignity, and self-efficacy. When clients have a say in their treatment, they engage more deeply, build resilience, and feel empowered. One foundational study notes that empowerment is developed through client engagements that “build on growth, skills, and strengths. Interactions are validating and affirming, and communicate a realistic sense of hope for the future.”
These interactions are made possible by giving clients autonomy and agency within the care process. By giving clients increased visibility into their treatment progress, diagnoses, and care providers, an EHR helps clients feel more in control of their journey, enabling more proactive involvement and decision-making.
EHRs also give clients a voice by allowing them to set their own care preferences directly in the platform using customizable templates. With an EHR, clients aren’t simply at their provider’s mercy. They’re active and empowered participants in care, with the ability to make decisions about their future.
6. Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues
While trauma is pervasive across demographics, not every population or person experiences it the same. Race, ethnicity, gender, culture, sexuality, and other parts of a person’s history and identity all impact their potential for experiencing trauma. Trauma-informed care must be culturally responsive and deeply attuned to these realities.
It’s essential for behavioral health care providers to adopt EHR platforms that enable culturally responsive care with embedded, AI-backed solutions for tracking health-related social needs (HRSN). These HRSN tools can capture key information about the person’s identity and connect that with social needs that might impact their health. Strong EHRs also use AI to collect, analyze, and report on disparity data to identify gaps within care delivery.
Better Trauma-Informed Care Starts Here
Effective mental health crisis intervention, providing a sense of safety and empowerment, and facilitating care coordination are just a few examples of trauma-informed care practices — and just a few examples of how an EHR can support clients who have experienced trauma.
A comprehensive tool like Core Solutions’ Cx360 platform can do all of this and more. It’s an all-in-one platform specifically tailored for the mental health care space, and it offers integrated features that can make all the difference in client outcomes, including:
- AI-powered tools for tracking symptoms, tracking HRSN, and detecting session note anomalies
- Secure communications solutions for provider collaboration
- Advanced care coordination, scheduling, workflow, and mobile tools
- Fast, accurate data reporting and analytics
- Billing and reimbursement support tools
Request a Cx360 platform demo to learn how the right technology can advance your clinic’s client-centered, trauma-informed care practices.
