Factors Related to Infusion of Trauma Education Among Counselor Educators at CACREP-Accredited Programs

Research has demonstrated the prevalence and cumulative nature of trauma and its lifelong adverse effects on physical, cognitive, emotional, and social wellness (Felitti et al., 1998; Merrick et al., 2019). Thus, counselor educators must prepare their students to work with clients with trauma effectively and ethically. A single study investigated trauma education and found that not all programs offer a trauma course (Montague et al., 2020). Thus, the CACREP (2015) trauma standards may be infused into other courses. The purpose of this study was to explore how trauma history, attitudes related to trauma-informed care, and prior trauma training were related to the infusion of trauma education into non-trauma-specific core courses by counselor educators working full-time for CACREP-accredited programs. It also investigated to what degree the trauma standards were infused. Multiple regression was used to analyze the data collected from 261 participants. Results indicated that moderate and substantial training were positive significant predictors of the degree of infusion (p <.001). The variables accounted for 14.1% of the variance. Although most counselor educators (91%) reported infusing the trauma standards into core courses, the standards were not infused equally. Results highlighted a high incidence of ACEs among counselor educators, with 62% reporting two or more and 33% four or more. Implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.