Trauma discourse expands: How neoliberal individualism obscures systemic violence and collective healing
Original framing: “What is trauma? The more we talk about it, the more it means” — The Conversation - Global
Trauma as a concept emerged from 19th-century psychiatry (e.g., 'hysteria') and was weaponized in colonial projects to pathologize resistance. The DSM’s expansion of PTSD in 1980 coincided with neoliberalism’s rise, individualizing systemic crises like war or poverty. Historical parallels include the moral treatment movement, which medicalized suffering while ignoring structural causes of madness.
Trauma discourse’s dilution reflects a neoliberal sleight-of-hand: by universalizing trauma as a personal burden, it obscures how late-stage capitalism, colonialism, and racial capitalism manufacture mass suffering.
The DSM’s expansion of PTSD categories parallels the rise of 'trauma-informed' corporate HR, where self-care becomes a band-aid for exploitation. Indigenous epistemologies—from Māori *whakapapa* to Diné *Hózhǫ́*—offer a radical alternative: trauma as a rupture in relational harmony, healed through land, ancestors, and collective repair. Yet these frameworks are sidelined by a mental health industry that profits from individualizing systemic harm. The way forward demands reparative justice, degrowth economies, and decolonized healing—policies that treat trauma not as a user error, but as a design flaw in extractive systems. The trickster’s laughter reminds us: the more we commodify trauma, the more it reveals the absurdity of a world that calls resilience a virtue while perpetuating the conditions of harm.