International We Are Not Broken Day – January 17, 2025

History of International We Are Not Broken Day

According to authors Gilliland and James, ‘crisis’ refers to human perception of an event or situation as an intolerable difficulty beyond one’s coping skills. This event can manifest itself in many forms, but the crisis stems from the emotional reaction of the individual to the event or situation. This crisis may cause the individual to respond in a pathological manner if the crisis becomes too overwhelming. Some extreme reactions include both homicidal and suicidal tendencies. The crisis itself can cause serious damage to an individual’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral states.

Individuals in crisis are usually those who have suffered from psychological trauma. Trauma renders a person helpless and powerless as a result of the overwhelming force of the triggering event. The traumatic event triggering the crisis usually alters the victim’s psyche. This traumatic event or situation often destroys the individual’s sense of control, connection, and meaning. The individual’s response to this trauma is similar to the body responding to distress. The psychological trauma represents a condition of acute distress causing a disturbance in one’s balanced state, thereby creating psychological disequilibrium — a result of the failure of the individual’s regular coping skills to respond to the psychological trauma. As a result of this response, the individual will suffer from acute distress paired with functional impairment.

The degree to which trauma can cause functional impairment to the victim varies from mild to severe. Without any form of relief from the crisis, the individual may become more disturbed and his or her behavior may become more disruptive to normal. It is for this reason that people with these conditions are labeled as ‘broken.’ An organization called We Are Not Broken, however, has been established to correct these misconceptions, thus instituting the International We Are Not Broken Day in 2019.