Women and Trauma Project
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Project Info. |
Millions of women seek help every year for troubling depression or anxiety, for puzzling physical symptoms like headaches, muscle aches, and stomach cramps, for addiction to drugs, alcohol, or food and for problems with relationships. What's being discovered is that physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse -otherwise known as "trauma", whether past or on-going, is often the cause of many of these problems.
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Trauma can take many forms: childhood sexual or physical abuse, institutional abuse, harassment, rape or assault in adulthood, and domestic violence, are some examples.
Surveys have consistently shown high rates of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse (trauma) among people with serious mental illness and have connected traumatic experiences to the severity of psychiatric symptoms. A history of trauma is also linked to recurring problems such as substance abuse, and too often leads to re-victimization. Trauma, mental health problems, and substance abuse create a viciously recurring cycle in which difficult experience in one area increases the likelihood of difficulty with the other areas.
NCSTAC's Women and Trauma initiative provides resources to help empower women who have survived trauma and are looking for effective solutions to their problems. Resources on this site include information about selected programs that have been successful in women's recovery, educational materials and links to a network of organizations and professionals working within the field of women and mental health.