Watch Insight's episode Trigger Warning, exploring whether trigger warnings are helpful, or do more harm than good, on SBS On Demand.
At just seven months old, Rachael Casella’s first-born daughter, Mackenzie, died after being diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic condition.
Rachael regularly posts about Mackenzie on her Instagram, but refuses to include trigger warnings.
“My daughter doesn't deserve to be covered in trigger warnings,” Rachael said.
“It upsets me that other people get to turn away from the conversations that they feel are uncomfortable,” she told Insight.
Although trigger warnings were originally designed to help people who have been through a traumatic experience, every trigger warning request Rachael has received she says has been from someone who is pregnant, not a parent who has also experienced child loss.
“They are scared of what could eventuate. And whilst I understand that, and I have empathy for the fear… I didn't get a warning that this was going to happen to me. I didn't get a warning that my daughter was going to die." Rachael said.
Rachael still finds things like pregnancy announcements and gender reveals triggering, but is determined not to let that trauma define her.
“I'm not going to ask someone to put a trigger warning on a pregnancy announcement. That's for me to know what my triggers are. And that's for me to work on them," she said.
Chris says he'd never heard of the concept of trigger warnings until very recently.
'I heard the two words before, but not together.'
When Chris Bakon returned home to Australia after his army deployment in Iraq, he found it impossible to switch off, and after 15 years he was eventually diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
“Panic attacks have been a big thing for me. Seeing emergency vehicles, you know, the mind instantly goes into that fight mode,” he said.
Even though fire, ambulance and police sirens trigger Chris’s condition, he had never heard about the concept of ‘trigger warnings’ until very recently.
“I mean, I'd heard the two words before, but put together, no,” Chris said.
“I don't think a trigger warning would do anything for me personally… Avoidance can be a bad thing. You hear it is a bad thing in the recovery world,” he said.
“I've just got to a point where I can choose what I want to see and what I want to do and the majority of the time… that seems to be working okay.”
A Trigger Warning Database
However trigger warnings have become increasingly commonplace, and many people, like primary school librarian, Rachel Speck, are strongly in favour of them.
Her own phobia of needles prompted her to create the ‘Trigger Warning Database’ - an online catalogue of over 12,000 books, with almost 300 categories for potential triggers.
“I was reading a book that had a really graphic blood test scene in it. And it caused me a lot of distress,” she said.
“So I started collecting warnings for the books I was reading, and publishing them. And eventually, it kind of grew into the website.”
The database covers everything from cheating, to the death of a grandparent.
“I don't know people's experiences. I don't know what's going to upset them or cause a trauma response for them. It's so individual,” she said when explaining why the database is so detailed.
“I find that pre-warning is the best help for me. But everyone's different.”
Rachel says feedback on the database has been ‘overwhelmingly positive.’
“Lots of people say that before they read a book, they check out our website and see if it's listed, so it can help them decide whether they're in the right frame of mind to be reading that or not,” she said.
“I think preparing people who have mental health conditions for what they're going to be diving into deeply is worth it.”
Similarly, Billi FitzSimons uses trigger warnings as editor of The Daily Aus, a news platform for young Australians that primarily publishes to social media.
“For us it's important because we are a social-first news platform,” Billi said.
“Instagram is a place that obviously a lot of people go to to see photos of their friends and families. And they're not necessarily expecting to see triggering content.”
She says for the most part, the editorial decision to include trigger warnings is consumer-led.
“For us, it's all about a choice. And people having a choice about whether they want to consume triggering content. So that's why we do use them,” she said.
Do trigger warnings work?
But even though society is incorporating more trigger warnings into day-to-day content, research suggests they have very little impact on people at all.
Victoria Bridgland is a lecturer at Flinders University College of Education, Psychology and Social Work. Her research has found trigger warnings don’t always have their intended effect.
“Generally, across all of the labs that have looked at it so far, trigger warnings don't seem to increase avoidance at all,” she said.
“And in some studies [they] can actually draw, say trauma survivors, towards content that's related to their own trauma.”
However according to Mindframe's 'Our words matter' guidelines, language choice can make a huge impact when used to empower those who have suffered trauma. Mindframe also reccomends that the term 'content advice' is used rather than 'trigger warning' when it comes to content covering such matters as suicide.
