Top Story: How to recognize if trauma is affecting you at work, and how to manage it

Work can be a stressful and difficult environment for a lot of people. Many suffer from past trauma that may impact their emotions and decisions, especially at work. About 5% of people who go through a traumatic experience develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a mental health condition that may involve reliving an event, avoiding reminders of it, having constant negative thoughts about it and lashing out if triggered by said event. Some employers may notice their employees with PTSD fall behind in productivity, performance and have more frequent absences.

“If we create workplaces that promote wellness and that are not always high pressure and allow people to have a predictable workflow and where we’re trying to be as transparent as possible, hopefully that would create a general situation where people are less triggered,” said Dr. Cristina Sophia Albott, an assistant professor and  PTSD expert at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

According to Dr. Albott, there is a new movement of trauma-informed care within healthcare that can be adopted by other workplaces. It is important to approach poor behavior and poor performance from a trauma-informed perspective, and to create a workplace that is not, “super-activating for people who may have histories of trauma,” said Dr. Albott.

You can read the Star Tribune’s full article here.