Trauma darkens people’s lives, worldwide. Much of that trauma remains hidden, especially in the developing world: unrecognized, undiagnosed, and therefore left untreated.

This trauma tree is a visual metaphor of the causes and consequences of traumas and traumatic stress.

The image of this trauma tree shows the origins or causes of trauma, depicted as root systems, which can be grouped into four categories, or ‘Four Violences’, a distinction borrowed from Johan Galtung (1) :

• Direct violence comprises acts intended to harm human beings
• Natural violence, or the violence of nature, in contrast to direct violence, is both unintended and mostly unavoidable
• Structural violence occurs when a social structure harms people and prevents them from meeting their basic needs; physical, economic or social
• Cultural violence manifests itself in prevailing attitudes, based on beliefs about power and ‘necessity’ of violence.

These Four Violences cause the many unseen scars of ‘silent’ and ‘loud emergencies’, of life’s adversities or accidents and of manmade or natural disasters. Those scars are shown here as the trauma-based disorders and diseases, growing out of the leafless branches of the trauma tree.

These trauma-based disorders and diseases affect not only individuals, but also families, communities and even whole societies. They create an ecosystem of profoundly adverse consequences for human development, for world development, and even for world peace.

But much of the world is unaware of these facts, which explains why the response remains far below the challenge that traumas pose.

Although trauma and traumatic stress are not altogether preventable, they can today be much better managed and treated than ever before.

But to actually realize that potential will require a greater consciousness among many stakeholders about the global burden of trauma.  And, more importantly, a greater awareness that effective therapy solutions are now available.

To bring those solutions to the millions who need them will require large-scale training of professional, paraprofessional and volunteer workers to identify, manage and treat traumas.

Both consciousness-raising and paraprofessional training present global-scale challenges. GIST-T was set up to help meet those challenges.

(1) -Galtung, J. (2000). Conflict transformation by peaceful means – the transcend method. Geneva: United Nations Disaster Management Training Programme (UN DMTP). Available at: www. transcend.org/pctrcluj2004/TRANSCEND_manual.pdf [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016].