Trauma, Gender, Sex and Substance Use

The trauma, gender, substance use project was a two-year project funded by Health Canada and the goal of this project was to help service providers and policymakers across Canada further integrate trauma-informed and VR sex and gender informed approaches. Trauma-informed practice is really centered on this idea of making sure that we work well with people in ways that do not retraumatize them, do not create the conditions for them to have another experience of being overwhelmed and unable to connect and engage. To act accordingly by giving all the people who come there are a lot of choice in what they do, safety in terms of how they feel about what kinds of responses they're getting, or what they're being asked to disclose, and some collaboration in their care. Being gender-informed in responding to substance use means that we actually recognize all those gender relations, gendered roles, opportunities, barriers, differences in power. It affects how we use substances, why we do, how we get into it, how we get out of it. When programs are developed to be more responsive to the specific needs and preferences of different gender groups, we also see improved retention and better outcomes. Trauma, gender and sex informed approach is a challenge to all of us to fuse those three streams of thought in everything we do. We co-created a lot of different resources such as a toolkit called New Terrain, all to raise the level of knowledge across Canada on these three approaches. And it includes a three-step policy tool, to help people consider trauma-informed and sex and gender informed approaches when developing new programs or policies, or when reviewing existing ones. Incorporating trauma-informed practice into sex and gender based analysis really is the key to moving this forward in Canada. That's the main point of thinking through trauma and gender informed approaches, it's to not think about who over there is going to tailor services or think through this work, but actually to begin the process ourselves, because it's the right thing to do.