Licensed Psychologist (LP), Compassion Recovery Center
Table of Contents
For millions of Americans, substance abuse is about self-medication and treating pain, discomfort, and trauma. Today, some 46.3 million Americans struggle with drug and alcohol use disorders. Taking a trauma improved approach to their care means taking that background of substance abuse to alleviate pain and incorporating it into treatment. It’s also increasingly the standard approach for hospitals, clinics, and ERs.
People are complex and struggle with mental and physical health problems for a variety of interconnecting reasons. A trauma-informed approach ensures that your caretakers understand what’s influencing your health, how to best handle it, and how to treat not just the symptoms but also the underlying problems. For substance use disorders, that often means looking at the reasons you use and not just use, although that can mean extending treatment times to allow you to recover from substance use disorders enough to make those realizations.
What is Trauma Informed Care?
Trauma informed care is a general approach to medical care that’s used in emergency care, long-term care, hospice care, and behavioral healthcare. It involves creating a program based around the patient. It also involves building an environment that is safe and supportive of the patient. And, most importantly, it means training staff to look at and approach addiction and its treatment in the right way so they can provide an inclusive, safe, and caring environment.
That means:
Reviewing your mental health history including family history to understand your risks, underlying problems, and symptoms created by substance use disorder. For example, if you’re showing symptoms of anxiety and depression, it may not mean that you have a depressive disorder. However, it may mean that you should have those symptoms treated and then reassessed in 3-6 months to determine if you have an underlying disorder and a dual diagnosis.
Assessing the possible impacts of trauma on treatment and recovery, with the understanding that substance use disorders increase risk of trauma and trauma increases risks of substance use disorders.
Looking for and treating underlying causes of substance use disorder with approved frameworks. E.g., for mental health disorders, for developmental disorders, for domestic violence and trauma. For example, a trauma informed approach may help individuals to cope with autism, symptoms of ADD, or to learn to create feelings of emotional safety and restoring choice in relationships. These treatments won’t fix the substance use disorder, but when combined with behavioral treatment for substance use disorder, can greatly improve outcomes.
Working to empower patients to solve their own problems and to have agency, so that they feel more in control of not just their substance use disorder but also their lives – promoting long-term recovery, the long-term ability to seek out treatment, and improved long-term outcomes.
Creating opportunities to learn life skills such as stress and anger management, typically through Mindfulness, exercise, and courses.
Building a safe environment, where staff are trustworthy, caring, and compassionate.
Treating you as an individual with unique problems and unique reasons for your behavior.
Essentially, trauma-informed treatment or care can involve a great deal. Typically it’s broken into multiple steps or processes, although most are delivered at the same time:
Creating a safe environment
Building a caring and emotionally safe environment where you feel safe to share;
Ongoing relationship building, where staff work to build trust and relationships at the pace you feel comfortable at;
Safe spaces to share trauma in private or as a group;
An informed and highly educated staff;
Staff work to be nonjudgmental.
Treating underlying problems
Asking questions about mental health history, trauma, and current mental health during initial contact and at contact points throughout treatment;’
Staff training so that staff understand behavior is almost always based on underlying problems and how to uncover those problems in a way that is safe for the patient;
Offering treatment for trauma, mental health problems, and behavioral disorders;
Offering tools such as relationship management, stress management, and anxiety management.
Empowering and creating agency
Giving individuals the option to make their own choices so they feel empowered;
Asking you to take ownership of yourself and your recovery;
Giving you tools to work with;
Including you in planning next steps, treatment, safety plans, and setting goals and respecting your choices;
Offering follow-up treatment and sessions so you can engage with your mental health as you progress through recovery.
Those steps mean that the individual will feel safe enough to get treatment, will have the tools to share underlying problems, can treat the problems rather than the symptoms of trauma and stress, and can learn the tools to seek out help or care rather than turning to drugs or alcohol in the future. It goes full circle.
If you or a loved one has a substance use disorder, trauma informed care for SUD can add a lot of value to your program and your treatment. Here, trauma-informed care fits into every aspect of your care – from emergency room admission to long-term rehab and counseling. Trauma-informed care means approaching you as if you are an individual with your own unique reasons behind behavior and choices and working to figure out those reasons and find solutions.
That means helping you to recover from addiction, not just by reducing the addiction, but by helping you to tackle the reasons you were drinking or using to begin with. And, that can be a powerful approach to your recovery.
Treating Underlying Causes – Trauma informed care works to try to understand the underlying causes behind substance abuse so you can move on with your life without being back in the same position you were before addiction.
Improving Engagement – Trauma-informed care works to make patients feel listened and talked to by creating safe environments. That can help you to better engage with treatment and therefore get more from it.
Customized Programs – Trauma-informed care ensures that patient tracks are customized based on the patient. This means making recommendations based on your medical history, updating your track as you move through therapy, and working with the patient to understand behavior, the underlying causes, and workarounds. It means tailoring your program to you so that it works for you and your problems.
Eventually, trauma-informed care relies on you engaging with your treatment center, sharing your truth, and getting treatment for that. That normally means having one on one treatment, getting check-ins, and having the space to share with your medical caretakers.
Looking For Trauma-informed Care?
Trauma-informed care relies on having a well-trained staff, a program that is flexible enough to incorporate individual care, and to offer a safe environment. However, if your treatment center can offer trauma-informed care, it can add a lot of value to your treatment. That’s especially true if you get follow-up treatment, with multiple touchpoints with your treatment center, so they can continue to offer more specific treatment as you move through recovery.
In each case, trauma-informed care will mean that your substance use disorder treatment is personalized, based on your history of mental health problems, and works to treat underlying causes as well as the symptoms of substance use disorder. However, often, you’ll start by treating the most pressing issues of addiction and cravings first so that you have the space to focus on full recovery.
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Accessibility Statement
compassionrecoverycenters.com
May 22, 2025
Compliance status
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience,
regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level.
These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible
to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific
disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML,
adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Screen-reader and keyboard navigation
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with
screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive
a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements,
alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website.
In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels;
descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups),
and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag
for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology.
To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on
as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Disability profiles supported in our website
Epilepsy Safe Mode: this profile enables people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures that result from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.
Visually Impaired Mode: this mode adjusts the website for the convenience of users with visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.
Cognitive Disability Mode: this mode provides different assistive options to help users with cognitive impairments such as Dyslexia, Autism, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
ADHD Friendly Mode: this mode helps users with ADHD and Neurodevelopmental disorders to read, browse, and focus on the main website elements more easily while significantly reducing distractions.
Blindness Mode: this mode configures the website to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and websites must be compatible with it.
Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired): this profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
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Font adjustments – users, can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
Color adjustments – users can select various color contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap color schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds, with over seven different coloring options.
Animations – person with epilepsy can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.
Content highlighting – users can choose to emphasize important elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.
Audio muting – users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire website instantly.
Cognitive disorders – we utilize a search engine that is linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions.
Browser and assistive technology compatibility
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Notes, comments, and feedback
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to