Between Trust and Trauma was founded by Malene — a survivor of psychiatric and mental health abuse — because she started documenting what happened to her and discovered she was not alone. This page is where we explain what we are, what we believe, and how we work.

Mission Statement

Between Trust and Trauma exists because trauma-informed care is more than language — it’s a paradigm shift the mental health field refuses to complete. It is past time.

We are survivors and peers who have lived the gap between what trauma-informed care promises and what it delivers when power, control, and ego still drive the system. We learned the hard way: institutions mastered the vocabulary without internalizing the values.

Our Mission: Mutual Aid and Relentless Accountability.

We support one another as peers. We document violations, name institutional harm, and hold providers accountable when they weaponize trauma-informed language while perpetuating the same damage. We don’t accept trauma-informed care as a checklist or a marketing claim. We demand it be embedded in every policy, every interaction, every power dynamic.

When systems resist, we build pressure from the outside — through survivor voices they can’t ignore.

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Vision Statement

A mental health system where every provider in the United States operates from genuine trauma-informed principles — not just in language, but in action, policy, and structure.

Where survivor voices have power, not pathology labels.

Where providers who cause harm face real consequences, not institutional protection.

Where trauma-informed means actual safety, choice, and collaboration — not control disguised in therapeutic language.

Where survivors stand together and force the paradigm shift the system refuses to make on its own.

We envision a system where survivors are believed, providers are held accountable, and trauma-informed care is lived — not marketed.

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How We Work

Between Trust and Trauma operates through public documentation, complaint navigation, peer education, and survivor solidarity.

We publish documented accounts of institutional psychiatric abuse, name specific providers and organizations when warranted, and build a public record that oversight bodies and communities can’t easily ignore.

We help survivors of mental health system harm understand their legal rights, navigate complaint processes, and access the education they were never given — about their rights, their diagnoses, their medications, and the laws that were supposed to protect them.

We create space for survivors to find each other — because isolation is one of the primary tools institutions use to protect themselves from accountability.

We are not a formal nonprofit and we accept no funding that compromises our independence. We answer to survivors, not systems.

Nothing About Us Without Us.