Trauma Types That May Affect a Family

In case the relationships among family members are unhealthy, the risk of psychological trauma increases significantly. Parental abuse and violence against children are severe threats since a child cannot provide adequate resistance and is forced to experience adults’ pressure. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network lists the traumas that arise from interpersonal relationships and create psychological complexes and challenges to normal development. By assessing their types, one can identify several types of trauma that can affect a family, in particular, intimate partner violence, physical or sexual abuse, as well as complex trauma. All these threats can manifest themselves in relation to both children and adults and carry risks to psychological and physical health.

Intimate partner violence is a trauma associated with domestic abuse. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, this problem manifests itself in the relationships between spouses or current partners and consists in the deliberate infliction of harm, which can be both physical and mental. As a rule, women suffer from such injuries more often, but men can also become targets of intimate partner violence. Another trauma is physical or sexual abuse, which affects all family members, including children, and poses a severe threat to a child’s well-being. Adults exhibiting this form of violence carry great danger, and the timely detection of such abuse forms is an essential activity of social support services. Finally, complex trauma is the problem most experienced by children. Both difficult interpersonal relationships in the family and external factors, for instance, bullying at school, can be the prerequisites for the issue. All the aforementioned traumas threaten normal and healthy relationships in families, and assistance from competent social authorities may be the only step to minimize their consequences.