"Trauma" and concept creep
A word that once named combat, disaster and assault now also covers breakups and bad bosses. The widening is measurable and real - whether it is a problem is a live academic fight.
We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. how we score evidence
Caveat on this rating: The descriptive finding (the word's extension measurably widened) is settled; the evaluative claim (that the widening is harmful) is not. Cascardi and Brown ("Concept Creep or Meaningful Expansion?") and Brandt and Proulx, in the same issue of Psychological Inquiry as Haslam's target article, argue the expansion can be principled and protective and that concept change is normal science. This row states the widening as fact and the harm claim as the live dispute it is.
"That was so traumatic." "I'm processing my trauma." A word that in clinical use named events like combat, disaster and assault now also covers breakups, difficult bosses and painful childhood dynamics - and the usage is sincere: it names experiences that genuinely hurt. The clinical anchor is PTSD's Criterion A, the DSM's definition of a qualifying traumatic event, whose own successive expansions the psychologist Richard McNally dubbed "bracket creep". The scholarly account of the wider cultural expansion is Nick Haslam's 2016 "concept creep" paper: psychology's concepts of harm and pathology - trauma among them - have steadily widened both horizontally, to new kinds of events, and vertically, to milder instances of the same kind.
Significant findings
The descriptive claim - the word's reach has measurably widened - is unusually well evidenced for a critical thesis. There is a validated scale measuring how broadly individuals apply harm concepts, and a corpus analysis of 825,628 psychology abstracts from 1970 to 2017 found "trauma" increasingly used in less severe contexts inside the scientific literature itself. This is not an old man complaining about language; the broadening is in the data.
The evaluative claim is a different matter, and it is contested in print. Haslam and colleagues argue the widening risks pathologizing ordinary adversity and diluting the term for the severely affected. Published in the same journal issue: Cascardi and Brown answer that expansion of harm concepts can be principled and protective - recognizing genuine harms earlier frameworks missed - and Brandt and Proulx that concept change is how normal science behaves. That the widening happened is settled; whether it is a problem is exactly what the field is arguing about.
The everyday gap is subtler than either camp. A person can be genuinely and lastingly hurt by an experience that does not meet the clinical threshold. The clinical word makes a specific promise - a defined construct with specific evidence-based treatments attached. The colloquial word makes no such promise, and treating the two as interchangeable is where the confusion starts. The full graded entry, with every citation, sits at www.resolv.social/topics/the-mental-health-lexicon.
Worth asking
Does what happened to me meet the clinical definition you would use - and does the answer change what treatment you would recommend? And if it is not PTSD, what is the right name for what I am carrying - does it need treatment, support, or time? An experience that misses the clinical threshold is not thereby disqualified from mattering.
Source
Concept Creep: Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology — Haslam N (2016)
Read the source: https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418
DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418
How this was scored
- Study design
- not recorded
- Funding
- not recorded
- Published in
- not recorded
- Sample size
- not recorded
- Preregistered
- not recorded
- Conflicts disclosed
- not recorded
- Independent of proponent
- not recorded
- Retracted
- No
We have not finished checking this source, so there is no scoring to show yet. “We have not checked this yet” and “this is disputed” are different statements, so no scored band is shown rather than a low one.
Read the full scoring rubric, including what it can't tell you.
Published August 31, 2026.
Questions
How strong is the evidence behind this?
Resolv rates this source "not yet assessed". We have not finished checking this source. No judgement either way. One caveat travels with that badge: The descriptive finding (the word's extension measurably widened) is settled; the evaluative claim (that the widening is harmful) is not. Cascardi and Brown ("Concept Creep or Meaningful Expansion?") and Brandt and Proulx, in the same issue of Psychological Inquiry as Haslam's target article, argue the expansion can be principled and protective and that concept change is normal science. This row states the widening as fact and the harm claim as the live dispute it is. The score is calculated from recorded facts about the source — study design, funding, publication venue, sample size, preregistration — not typed in by an editor.
What is the source for this?
Concept Creep: Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology — Haslam N (2016). DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418. The full source is linked on this page so you can read it yourself.
Is this medical advice?
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
This is information to bring to your prescriber, not medical advice and not a reason to change anything on your own. Nothing here is an instruction to stop or reduce a medication. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.