Toward a feminist psychological theory of “institutional trauma”

Public discussions about trauma are circulating exponentially in the wake of global movements against structural violence, and efforts to mainstream “trauma-informed” approaches in mental health, human services, and organizational contexts. Within these discussions, the term “institutional trauma” is increasingly being deployed to make sense of structural violence and its impacts. However, such discussions typically reproduce highly individualistic understandings of trauma. Recent feminist advances in trauma theory articulate trauma as a distinctly socio-political form of distress, and critical feminist psychological work argues that gender and other institutions play a substantial role in defining and mediating experiences of trauma. However, the role of institutions in the (re)production of trauma remains under-theorized in the psychological literature. This paper applies feminist, critical mental health, and decolonial perspectives to identify the limitations of mainstream psychological perspectives on trauma and proposes a critical psychological theory of “institutional trauma”. I apply this critical analytic to argue that dominant biomedical and neoliberal frameworks fail to adequately account for the socio-political dimensions of trauma. I then consider institutional theory as a useful feminist psychological analytic through which to expand trauma theory and subvert pathologizing accounts of trauma as disordered and maladaptive.