A Family Survives Genocide

Abstract

This is a case study of a family that survived genocide and a discussion of families and massive psychic trauma. This family, like many others from Bosnia-Herzegovina, was driven from their home by Serb forces-"ethnically cleansed"-then eventually escaped to Croatia, and was later resettled in the United States. They were referred to us, a group of mental health professionals who established the Bosnian Refugee Trauma Program at the Yale Psychiatric Institute (YPI). We have done clinical, testimony, and research work with the refugee families from Bosnia who resettled in our region, described in part in prior reports (Weine, Becker et al. 1995a, 1995b; Weine and Laub 1995).