Psychological trauma is a response to an event that a person finds highly stressful, e.g. being in a war zone, a natural disaster, an accident, or exposure to abuse or neglect. Trauma can lead to a range of emotional and behavioural symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other mental health conditions. Not everyone who experiences a stressful event will develop trauma. As Gabor Maté defines it, “trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop… Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.”
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