Trauma informed care is a novel and increasingly popular way of working in forensic mental health settings. This has however meant that there has been little time for evidence to accumulate, best practice to be determined, and harmful ways of working identified. In this special issue for the International Journal of Forensic Mental Health we would like to draw attention to ways in which forensic mental health services have considered and have sought to improve service delivery by being trauma informed. We welcome original research, systematic reviews/meta-analyses and theoretical papers and invite authors to explore questions related to trauma and offending and describe responsive practice initiatives designed to help improve forensic mental health services around the world.
Suggested topics for manuscripts include, but are not limited to:
• theories of trauma, recovery and resilience, discussing links between trauma and offending as well as mental health difficulties relevant to forensic mental health services
• trauma and risk; looking at the ways in which understanding trauma and its role in the difficulties experienced by service users in forensic mental health settings can contribute to better outcomes
• impact of offending on partners, children and social circles of people who have offended; looking at the way this reduces social capital and therefore impacts on future rehabilitation attempts
• trauma experiences of justice involved people; highlighting the ways both offending and the response of the CJS to offending can be unhelpful to those impacted.
• trauma in different populations – for example young people in forensic mental health services
• post traumatic growth and strengths-based interventions; highlighting the importance of not allowing ‘trauma’ to become a stigmatising label and seen as being only associated with adverse outcomes
• organisational aspects of trauma; looking at ways in which forensic mental health services can be impacted by working with trauma, focussing on vicarious trauma and pre-existing trauma in staff groups and the way this can be triggered by the work
• understanding discrimination in trauma informed work; exploring the various way sin which discrimination of different kinds gets played out in forensic settings and the traumatic impacts of this on residents and staff.
Contributors should give consider ways in which trauma informed care can best be delivered in forensic settings. The potential for re-traumatising people in forensic settings is greater than in many other settings and consequently the task of delivering trauma informed care is potentially much more problematic. Attention to ways of offsetting the harmful impacts of custodial settings should be considered. Contributions based on experience of trialling this kind of working will be welcomed. It is also hoped that the unique ways in which this way of working can become inadvertently iatrogenic is also welcomed.
Finally, we draw attention to the fact that this is an international journal so manuscripts should consider the generalizability, across countries and jurisdictions, of their contribution.
