[cthalupa]

Trigger warnings have been quite heavily researched at this point and at best they seem to have no positive impact to overcoming traumatic events and a some of the studies have shown them to be a negative.

Put 'scientific support for trigger warnings' in your favorite search engine and you'll find meta-analysis, RCTs, other types of studies, reviews, as well as discussions from the APS, other psychology and psychiatry related publications, etc.

This isn't to say removing trigger warnings is a replacement for actual guided therapy, exposure therapy or otherwise, but it doesn't seem like it would be a negative outcome for long term mental health and would be a benefit for anticipatory distress and potentially in combating avoidant behaviors (though not all studies universally found them to increase avoidant behaviors - just some)

This is a separate question than when it comes to general polite society and social expectations and what is and isn't considered a courtesy. The studies also aren't dealing with people that have just gone through the traumatic experience, so you could make a reasonable argument that exposure to something still fresh could have a very different impact.

[UncleMeat]

The purpose is not to help people overcome traumatic events. The purpose is to be kind to people. "Hey you are going to have a shitty day but it'll help you deal with your trauma" is not something that a professor should be unilaterally deciding.

[cthalupa]

Facilitating negative behaviors that prevent/increase the difficulty of overcoming trauma is not being kind to someone.

[UncleMeat]

But is there evidence that trigger warnings in classrooms make overcoming trauma more difficult? The cited research just says it doesn't help people overcome trauma.

[cthalupa]

Avoidant behavior is defined as specifically attempted to avoid being exposed to things that remind you of your trauma.

Avoidant behavior is basically universally agreed to be a maladaptive behavior to ptsd.

[hananova]

All those papers look at the difference between "consuming content without being given a trigger warning" and "consuming content after being given a trigger warning."

There has been no proper research on the effectiveness of "being given a trigger warning, and then not consuming the content because of it." Which seems to be the most important factor to consider when it's about avoid sudden panic responses.

[cthalupa]

> There has been no proper research on the effectiveness of "being given a trigger warning, and then not consuming the content because of it."

Well, there has been. From multiple angles. One, avoiding content because it might trigger you is just... avoidant behavior. Which is pretty much universally considered a bad thing. There's a big difference from seeking out exposure because you want to do your own exposure therapy (bad thing) and just letting yourself be exposed to things in a more organic fashion (good thing).

Two, most research indicates that TW do not actually reduce the consumption of content. Not all of the studies are on "did they help people process content they watched," as a lot of them are "did the TW make people not watch the content to begin with." Mostly it seems to haven no impact. A smaller subset of studies showed effects in other directions - both reduction and increase of content viewing after TW. If they reduce viewing I'd argue this is bad because it's avoidant behavior, and I suspect that the 'forbidden fruit' effect is also not positive because it's now giving you pre-viewing anxiety and is no longer the more organic 'let exposure happen naturally, don't just stop watching the news because it might contain stories about war.'