What is trauma?

Trauma is an event that occurs and may affect people in different ways.

Trauma may happen for things like:

• • Serious injury or harm
  • Violence
  • Death

Ways Trauma Can Happen

Trauma may happen directly to people. An example of direct trauma is someone having an accident. If a person sees something happen to someone else it may cause trauma. An example of this is seeing someone have an accident. Hearing about trauma happening to someone else may cause trauma for the person hearing about it.
An example is if someone tells a person details about an accident that happened.
Sometimes trauma may happen at work. An example of this is a police officer or firefighter.

When Does Trauma Affect People

Some people are affected by trauma as soon as the event happens. Some people may not feel the affects of trauma for days, weeks, or months. Some people are affected immediately by trauma and can continue to be effected for days, weeks, or months.

Impacts of Trauma

Trauma can affect many different areas of a person’s life.

Some of areas that can be affected are:

• • Physical health
  • Relationships and getting along with others
  • Emotions
  • Mental health