Do Trigger Warnings Actually Help? Here’s What the Research Says
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 23
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 24
Written by Brian R Basham, Counsellor
Brian is a mental health counsellor who brings with him decades of lived experience and academic study to the profession of counselling. He has lived with a brain injury for over 30 years and has developed various strategies to live a full life. His focus is on men's mental health and employment mental health.
These days, it feels like trigger warnings are everywhere. Before TV shows, in news articles, on social media posts, or at the start of a university lecture, you’ve probably seen one. They usually come with a short message. “Warning: This material contains references to violence, trauma, or abuse.”
The idea behind them is simple, give people a heads-up about potentially upsetting content so they can prepare themselves or choose not to engage. Supporters say this is especially important for survivors of trauma, while critics argue that warnings might do more harm than good by making people anxious or encouraging avoidance.
So which side is right? A recent study helps clarify things.
The big study on trigger warnings
Psychologists Bridgland, Jones, and Bellet pulled together all the best research on trigger warnings in a meta-analysis (a study of studies). This gave them a bird’s-eye view of what we know about how warnings affect people. [1]
They focused on four main questions:
Do warnings change how people feel when they see upsetting material?
Do they make people more likely to avoid the material?
Do they create anxiety before people even see the material?
Do they affect how well people learn or remember information in educational settings?
What they found
1. Emotional impact
Warnings didn’t change how people felt when they saw the content. Whether warned or not, people experienced a similar level of distress.
2. Avoidance
Warnings didn’t deter people from consuming content. In fact, sometimes they had the opposite effect, people got more curious and wanted to see what was behind the warning.
3. Anticipatory anxiety
Here’s where warnings had an effect. They increased anxiety beforehand. Reading a trigger warning often made people feel tense, worried, or on edge before the content even appeared. But that extra worry didn’t make them cope better once they saw the material.
4. Learning and comprehension
In classrooms, warnings made no difference to learning. Students didn’t remember material better or worse when given a warning.
Why don’t they work as intended?
Warnings do a good job of alerting people that something challenging is coming, but they don’t help people handle that experience. Imagine someone telling you, “What you’re about to see will upset you.” That statement alone can spark anxiety, but unless you know how to regulate your emotions, you end up reacting just the same way you would have without the warning.
Human curiosity also plays a role. Just as a “do not touch” sign often makes us want to touch, a trigger warning can spark curiosity rather than caution.
What this means in practice
For teachers: Trigger warnings don’t improve learning and may make students more anxious before class. If the goal is to support students, building a supportive environment and offering resources might be more effective.
For mental health: Since avoidance is a key feature of anxiety and PTSD, therapists generally encourage gradual exposure rather than avoiding reminders. Warnings don’t reduce distress and may fuel anticipatory fear, so they’re not a therapeutic tool.
For society: Warnings might still serve a social purpose. They can show empathy, signal respect, or align with cultural expectations. But if the goal is to protect mental health, they don’t really do the job.
What we still don’t know
This research primarily originates from Western countries, often in the form of short-term studies. We don’t yet know how warnings affect people over the long term, in real-life situations (outside of labs and classrooms), or in different cultures. We also don’t know whether certain groups, like people with severe PTSD, react differently.
Future research may explore whether pairing warnings with coping strategies (like mindfulness tips or grounding techniques) could make them more helpful.
The bottom line
Trigger warnings may sound like a good idea, but the evidence says they don’t do what most people hope. They don’t reduce distress, don’t prevent avoidance, and don’t help people learn. What they do is raise people’s anxiety before they even see the material.
That doesn’t mean we should get rid of them altogether, they may still serve as a sign of care or respect.
But if the goal is to safeguard mental health, it’s time to recognise that trigger warnings aren’t the solution.
Read more from Brian R Basham
Brian R Basham, Counsellor
Brian is an experienced counsellor and educator who focuses on men's mental health and encourages employers to focus on their employees' mental health- a focus for his PhD research. He has developed a tool to build effective resilient relationships, and from his experience in policing, has identified five levels of critical thinkers and an assessment tool to guide critical thinking development. Although he has lived with a brain injury for over 30 years, he has achieved a number of academic qualifications and learned to pivot when an obstacle appears. His life motto is "refuse to lose".
Related research:
[1] Bridgland, V. M. E., Jones, P. J., & Bellet, B. W. (2023). A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings, Content Warnings, and Content Notes. Clinical Psychological Science, 12(4), 751-771. (Original work published 2024)
