Trauma-related altered states of consciousness and offending

Offence-related altered states of consciousness (ORASC) are a critical domain to address in interventions with offending and are often linked in complex ways to a range of different kinds of trauma experiences. They can both interfere with attending to and assimilating work addressing offending and can lead to a loss of state-dependent learning when this is most needed, that is, during ‘relapse processes’. As a significant contributory factor in the cascade of events leading up to an offence, it is important that clinicians have a good understanding of how they operate and develop interventions that enable people to recognise and respond to changes in state over time. This chapter explores different trauma-derived states and their links to offending. As well as building understanding, interventions need to work with people whilst they are in different states in order to develop state-dependent skills and capacities to understand and act, or break away from, the impacts of these states and the motivational systems that have been activated. Developing skills and capacities for recognition during an altered state followed by individually tailored active grounding can help prevent the responsivity and offence-supportive processes linked with ORASC.