Legacy Of Trauma Research Articles

A Legacy of Trauma: How Local Conflicts Can Have Global Implications for Mental Health.

A Legacy of Trauma: How Local Conflicts Can Have Global Implications for Mental Health.

“It Just Permeated everything.” Third Generation Holocaust Survivor Perspectives Regarding the Genocide’s Impact on Family Functioning

ABSTRACT Research into the intergenerational effects of the Holocaust has focused on traumatization of the survivors’ children, and has yet to explore adaptive responses in succeeding generations. In this study, 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Australian adult grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Interpretive phenomenological analysis identified six themes: connection and discomfort with the Holocaust’s salience, reckoning with a legacy of trauma, insecurity and survival strategies, the value of a strong education, family is everything, and valuing a communal outlook. These findings imply that the Holocaust’s traumatizing effects linger for multiple generations, but responding in adaptive ways benefits relationships within survivor families.

Review of Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma.

Review of Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma.

A Positive Legacy of Trauma? The Role of Perceived Social Support on Mental Health Among Earthquake Survivors During the COVID-19 Outbreak.

BackgroundPeople with prior experience of severe trauma may be particularly vulnerable in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, little is known about mental health problems among prior trauma survivors during the pandemic outbreak.MethodsA total of 362 Wenchuan earthquake survivors were assessed using Patient Health Questionnaire, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, as well as Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, as part of an online survey between February 3 and 10, 2020.ResultsOur results showed that 6.6 and 4.7% of the participants experienced depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 outbreak, respectively. Perceived social support was negatively associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms. Earthquake exposure has no direct effect on current depressive and anxiety symptoms, but it would moderate the direct relationship between perceived social support and psychological symptoms.ConclusionsOur findings suggested that trauma exposure may lead to salutogenic outcomes. The protective effect of perceived social support on psychological symptoms was greater in people with a higher level of trauma exposure than in a lower one.

Understanding Racial Inequities in the Implementation of Harm Reduction Initiatives.

Objectives. To elucidate a structurally oriented theoretical framework that considers legacies of racism, trauma, and social exclusion and to interrogate the "unmet obligations" of the institutionalization of the harm reduction infrastructure to provide equitable protections to Black and Latinx people who use drugs (PWUD) in Maryland. Methods. In 2019, we conducted a rapid ethnographic assessment of and qualitative interviews with PWUD (n = 72) and stakeholders (n = 85) in 5 Maryland counties. We assessed PWUD's experiences, service gaps in as well as barriers and facilitators to accessing services, and the potential to expand harm reduction programs. Results. The unmet obligations we found included enforcement and punitive governance of syringes, naloxone, and other drug use equipment; racism and racialization, social exclusion, and legacies of trauma; and differential implications of harm reduction for populations experiencing racialized criminalization. Conclusions. The implementation of harm reduction policies are a first step, but assessment of structural dynamics are needed for diverse communities with unique histories. This research illuminates a key paradox: progressive policy is implemented, yet the overdose crisis escalates in communities where various forms of racialized exclusions are firmly entrenched. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(S2):S173-S181. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306767).

Reflections on healing and recovery from the legacies of trauma and violence

Last paper by June with an introduction by the Editor in Chief

‘How much more must I suffer?’: post-traumatic stress and the lingering impact of violence upon enslaved people

ABSTRACT By centering the voices of formerly enslaved people, this article suggests that black Americans in the nineteenth century had a sophisticated understanding of how slavery’s brutality instituted a multi-generational legacy of trauma in the United States. While they would not recognize the term ‘post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), black writers’ detailed descriptions of traumatic violence, and its debilitating impact amongst their friends and relatives, reflect many symptoms associated with PTSD. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and its call to examine the lethal repercussions of systemic racism, this article provides one approach for scholars examining the links between anti-black racism and trauma in early American history.

“Weird Melancholy” and the Modern Television Outback: Rage, Shame, and Violence in Wake in Fright and Mystery Road

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marcus Clarke famously described the Australian outback as displaying a 'Weird Melancholy' (qtd. in Gelder 116). The strange sights, sounds, and experiences of Australia’s rural locations made them ripe for the development of the European genre of the Gothic in a new location, a mutation which has continued over the past two centuries. But what does it mean for Australia’s Gothic landscapes to be associated with the affective qualities of the melancholy? And more particularly, how and why does this Gothic effect (and affect) appear in the most accessible Gothic media of the twenty-first century, the television series? Two recent Australian television adaptations, Wake in Fright (2017, dir. Kriv Stenders) and Mystery Road (2018, dir. Rachel Perkins) provoke us to ask the question: how does their pictorial representation of the Australian outback and its inhabitants overtly express rage and its close ties to melancholia, shame and violence? More particularly, I argue that in both series this rage is turned inwards rather than outwards; rage is turned into melancholy and thus to self-destruction – which constructs an allegory for the malaise of our contemporary nation. However, here the two series differ. While Wake in Fright posits this as a never-ending narrative, in a true Freudian model of melancholics who fail to resolve or attend to their trauma, Mystery Road is more positive in its positioning, allowing the themes of apology and recognition to appear, both necessary for reparation and forward movement.

Review of 'Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory'

Review of 'Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory'

Poetry Collection | Excerpts from The Complicated Lives of Islands

Author(s): Magano, Thato | Abstract: Poems included: “Little Boy Dying,” “Missing Pearls,” “The House of Metis,” “The End of the World is Pleasure,” “Waste,” and “Legacies of Trauma”

HALF A CENTURY OF SOUTH AFRICAN “BORDER WAR’’ LITERATURE: A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION

Half a century ago, in 1966, the so-called “Border War” broke out in what was then called South-West Africa (SWA) – known as Namibia after gaining independence in 1990. It was the most comprehensive, costly and traumatic of all the apartheid wars, and although it focused on SWA/Namibia, the conflict spilled over into Angola and Zambia, and should also be viewed in relation to the role played by the then South African Defence Force (SADF) in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and in Mozambique. While the War for Southern Africa (1966-1989) was being fought, a number of books on the conflict were published. In the 1990s, while South Africa experienced a decade of dramatic political changes and concomitant transformation, not many books on the war “up north” and “on the border” were published, but from about the dawn of the new millennium, there has been a steady stream of publications (mostly in South Africa) that deal with the abovementioned conflict. Why this renewed interest? Who are the authors? What do they write about? This article endeavours to provide answers to these and related questions by analysing half a century of “Border War” literature, primarily focusing on books published in South Africa. The way in which these publications can influence people and thus, also the extent to which the legacy of the apartheid era is continued, will also be addressed. For obvious reasons, the issue of memory and violence, the legacies of trauma, the legacies of conscription, and the challenges with regard to researching the apartheid wars, as well as related matters, will also be interrogated.

Proximity, Defence and Boundaries with Children and Care-Givers: A Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Perspective

Traumatised children can be easily dysregulated by relational dynamics. These children often experience the sequential or simultaneous stimulation of attachment and defence characteristic of disorganised/disoriented attachment patterns. Expressing their relational needs for proximity and distance can be fraught with conflict, confusion, frustration and fear. Parents/care-givers are often baffled about how to balance boundaries and limit setting with closeness and proximity in a way that is effective for themselves and their children. Additionally, parents/care-givers themselves may have histories of trauma and attachment failure that impair their own ability to balance closeness and distance. Both proximity seeking or closeness and defense or boundary setting actions are organized by innate, psychobiological systems of attachment and defense, and for parents/caregivers, the caregiving system as well. Each action system has to meet particular goals to achieve proximity to and security with a trusted other (attachment system); to defend and protect when needed (defence systems) and to protect and care for offspring (care-giving system). The legacy of trauma and attachment failure, with their consequential neuropsychological deficits, can constrain and disrupt adaptive responses to the arousal of these three systems. This paper clarifies the inborn systems that drive actions of proximity and distance. A case study will explore the interactions of these systems in child/care-giver therapy. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy will be described and somatic relational techniques will be illustrated to address proximity and defence/boundaries in the context of child therapy and care-giver/child therapy.

Supplemental Material for The Danieli Inventory of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, Part II: Reparative Adaptational Impacts

Supplemental Material for The Danieli Inventory of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, Part II: Reparative Adaptational Impacts

Searching chromosomes for the legacy of trauma

Searching chromosomes for the legacy of trauma

Do law reforms matter? Exploring the victimization− criminalization continuum in the sentencing of Aboriginal women in Canada

In 1996 Canada introduced progressive sentencing law reforms, such as: restorative non-carceral alternatives for offenders to serve their prison sentence in the community under strict conditions for up to two years; and special consideration of Aboriginal offenders so that courts may take into account the detrimental effects of colonialism such as residential schools, family breakdown and substance abuse. This article is a quantitative examination of 168 reported sentencing decisions to assess the impacts of these reforms upon Aboriginal men and women convicted of violent offences. Findings presented here suggest that the potential of sentencing law reforms is realized unevenly across Canada, pursued most often in sexual assault cases, and seldom on behalf of Aboriginal women. I suggest sentencing law reforms are insufficient strategies to address the incarceration spiral of Aboriginal women when the conditions of their lives are contoured by legacies of trauma and neglect.

A Legacy of Trauma: Caribbean Slavery, Race, Class, and Contemporary Identity inAbeng

The disruptions and transformations caused by the slave trade are largely demographic and cultural. It was through this extended and traumatic forced population transfer that Caribbean colonies across the board became dominantly black communities. For these island nations and territories, the inescapable fact of their blackness had always marked a tangible and material link with their origins in Africa. Jamaica was home to more rebel- lions than all of the other British islands combined, proof positive of the continuing identitarian role of African culture in the Caribbean during the period of slavery. Colonization's phenomenon of ethnocultural creolization marked an interpenetration of populations and practices originating both from the colonial metropole and from the African continent, such that long- held notions of race and social stratification would be have to be revised as independence approached, posing a set of complex tensions effectively articulated in Michelle Cliff's novel Abeng.

Imaging Separation in Tom Feelings' The Middle Passage: White Ships / Black Cargo and Toni Morrison's Beloved

Graphic artist Tom Feelings and novelist Toni Morrison face similar challenges in representing the Atlantic slave trade. Feelings' The Middle Passage: White Ships / Black Cargo tells a wordless narrative in pictures. Morrison's Beloved portrays in contemporary narrative form, the devastating effects of forced transnational migration. Both artists confront conventional silences surrounding this aspect of slavery by presenting displaced Africans on their way to the Americas. Their texts both define Black literature of the late twentieth century, and trouble the status quo as experiments in aesthetic expression. Their works demonstrate the way a legacy of trauma is written into the fabric of US culture. I put forth a comparative methodology of representations of the Middle Passage in word and image, by examining the self-definition of a genre and the collapse of conventional medial distinctions between graphic, linguistic and musical expression. Feelings employs overt symbolism and more subtle modes of signifying in his treatment of individuals in crisis, forced into new subject positions when enslaved. Likewise, Morrison critiques identity formation while in bondage by stylising her language for particular effects. Parallel structures in word and image signify resistance to convention as African American literature makes its way into the broader realm of world literature.

Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland

<i>Jindabyne</i>’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland

Emotional Reconciliation

This article examines the public significance of emotions, most specifically their role in constituting identity and community in the wake of political violence and trauma. It offers a conceptual engagement with processes of healing and reconciliation, showing that emotions are central to how societies experience and work through the legacy of catastrophe. In many instances, political actors deal with the legacy of trauma in restorative ways, by re-imposing the order that has been violated. Emotions can in this way be directed by elites who are concerned with reinstating political stability and social control. Healing often becomes more about retribution and revenge, rather than a long-term project begetting peace, collaboration and emotional catharsis. The emotions triggered by trauma thus tend to perpetuate existing antagonisms, further entrenching the disingenuous perceptions of identity that may have created violence in the first place. Surveying this process, this article suggests that scholars of politics and reconciliation need to be more attentive to the role emotion plays in shaping particular forms of community. Doing so requires a systematic understanding not only of the feelings associated with first-hand experiences of trauma, but also of the manner in which these affective reactions can spread and generate collective emotions, thus producing new forms of antagonism. Addressing this challenge, the authors explore how a more conscious and active appreciation of the whole spectrum of emotions — not only anger and fear, for instance, but also empathy, compassion and wonder — may facilitate more lasting and ingenuous forms of social healing and reconciliation.

Benefit finding and diurnal cortisol slope in maternal caregivers: A moderating role for positive emotion

The purpose of the present study was to explore the associations among benefit finding, daily positive and negative emotion, and daily cortisol slope in 71 maternal caregivers. Benefit finding was measured using the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9, 455–472.). Cortisol slope was not significantly correlated with any of the PTGI subscales, positive emotion, or negative emotion. However, the interactions of daily positive emotion with the PTGI subscales of Personal Strength, Appreciation of Life, and Spiritual Change were statistically significant such that higher scores on these subscales predicted a steeper (more adaptive) daily cortisol slope only for those women who also had higher levels of daily positive emotion.