In our society, many survivors of childhood abuse—physical, verbal, or sexual—find their experiences minimized or reframed as “mental illness.” This mislabelling can be deeply damaging, compounding the pain of the original trauma.

The Problem: Trauma Is Often Disbelieved or Ignored

Historically, even experts in psychology have struggled to acknowledge survivors’ experiences. Jeffrey Masson’s The Assault on Truth highlights how Sigmund Freud initially believed his patients’ reports of sexual abuse but later abandoned the theory to preserve psychoanalytic conventions. The lesson is clear: systems often prioritize theory or social comfort over truth and survivors’ voices.

In practical terms, this means survivors may be labelled with conditions such as bipolar disorder or personality disorders. While these labels may seem to explain behaviours, they often disregard the reality that trauma leaves its own lasting marks, which are separate from psychiatric illness.

Why This Matters

Trauma leaves real scars: Emotional, cognitive, and physiological responses to abuse are normal adaptations, not arbitrary pathology.
Misdiagnosis harms: When the focus is on “mental illness” rather than lived experience, survivors may be medicated, pathologized, or dismissed rather than supported

Validation is healing:

Acknowledging the truth of what happened is the first step toward recovery. Survivors need recognition of their experiences, not labels that erase them.

A Trauma-Informed Perspective

Understand the difference: Trauma responses can resemble mental health symptoms but stem from experience, not inherent pathology.

Listen and believe: Survivors’ narratives should be validated, not judged or reframed.

Focus on support, not labels: Healing comes from safe environments, understanding, and empowerment, not just diagnosis and medication

Reclaiming the Narrative
Survivors can begin to reclaim their experiences as part of their own story, not as a reflection of a disorder.

Recognizing the reality of abuse—acknowledging the pain, the resilience, and the long-term impact—can be radically validating.

The message is clear: your trauma is real, your scars are real, and you are not “mentally ill” for having survived abuse.

Final Thought
Understanding the distinction between trauma and mental illness is not just academic—it can change how survivors are treated, how they see themselves, and how society supports healing. Like Masson highlighted in Freud’s time, truth matters, and validating lived experience is a critical part of recovery.