In 2018, the Resource Centre for Stress in a Military Context (CRSCM) was created, consolidated in the status of Former Combatant on 20 August 2020, by Decree-Law No. 46/2020. The CRSCM "was created based on a multidisciplinary perspective covering the medical, psychological, social and political-legal areas, with the aim of collecting, organising, producing and disseminating dispersed knowledge on the theme of stress in a military context" (CRSCM, 2020). In order to achieve the listed objectives, different universities and study centres were called to participate in the project, with teams responsible for different areas of knowledge, which articulated among themselves the development of a common work plan, divided according to the different areas of action.

The Trauma Observatory/CES has been part of the CRSCM since its creation in 2018, and is dedicated to studying and proposing practices for the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of pathological conditions resulting from the impact of stress factors during military life.

In the early years, the team was formed by the coordinator, psychiatrist Luísa Sales, and researchers Joana P. Becker and Camila Borges, focused on the practices of medicine and psychiatry in the context of the Colonial War, as part of the project Practices of Medicine and Psychiatry in the Context of the Colonial War: Memories from the Ground.

The team is currently coordinated by Joana P. Becker and has Bruno Machado and Inês Moço as researchers.

As well as finalising the previous studies carried out under the project, the team is working on a new project, Therapeutic Intervention Practices for Psychic Pathologies Resulting from Stressful Experiences in a Military Context (PIT). The aim is to identify, characterise and assess the effectiveness of medical interventions, recent or under development, for the treatment of pathologies triggered by traumatic experiences, specifically PTSD.