Unique Therapeutic Challenges of Mass Trauma

Abstract Research in postconflict settings indicated that children's exposure to war and natural disaster is a significant predictor of experiencing violence within their families. However, it is unclear if this effect is driven by characteristics of traumatized children or their parents. To disentangle these different factors we conducted a survey in a children's home in Sri Lanka. A total of 146 institutionalized children (aged 8 to 17) were interviewed using standardized questionnaires administered by local senior counselors in order to assess children's exposure to mass trauma, family violence, and violence in the institution as well as their mental health. Linear regression analyses revealed that, controlling for potential confounds, previous exposure to civil war was a significant predictor of violence by guardians in the children's home. In addition, previous exposure to family violence was a significant predictor of violence by peers in the institutions. A mediation analysis showed that children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems partly mediated the relationship between violence prior to the admission to the children's home and violence in the children's home. The findings of our study provide evidence for the assumption that the transmission of mass trauma into interpersonal violence can occur independently from parents through children's psychopathology.

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Associations between News Media Coverage of the 11 September Attacks and Depression in Employees of New York City Area Businesses

Behavioral Sciences ◽

10.3390/bs11030029 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 29

Author(s):

Betty Pfefferbaum ◽

Jayme M. Palka ◽

Carol S. North

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

News Media ◽

York City ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Mass Trauma ◽

High Prevalence ◽

General Populations ◽

Disaster Trauma

Research has examined the association between contact with media coverage of mass trauma events and various psychological outcomes, including depression. Disaster-related depression research is complicated by the relatively high prevalence of the major depressive disorder in general populations even without trauma exposure. The extant research is inconclusive regarding associations between disaster media contact and depression outcomes, in part, because most studies have not distinguished diagnostic and symptomatic outcomes, differentiated postdisaster incidence from prevalence, or considered disaster trauma exposures. This study examined these associations in a volunteer sample of 254 employees of New York City businesses after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks. Structured interviews and questionnaires were administered 35 months after the attacks. Poisson and logistic regression analyses revealed that post-9/11 news contact significantly predicted the number of postdisaster persistent/recurrent and incident depressive symptoms in the full sample and in the indirect and unexposed groups. The findings suggest that clinical and public health approaches should be particularly alert to potential adverse postdisaster depression outcomes related to media consumption in disaster trauma-unexposed or indirectly-exposed groups.

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Catalyst Twenty-Twenty: Post-Traumatic Growth at Scales of Person, Place and Planet

Challenges ◽

10.3390/challe12010009 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 9

Author(s):

Alan C. Logan ◽

Susan H. Berman ◽

Richard B. Scott ◽

Brian M. Berman ◽

Susan L. Prescott

Keyword(s):

Resource Depletion ◽

Mass Trauma ◽

Planetary Health ◽

Post Traumatic Growth ◽

Global Pandemic ◽

Assumptive World ◽

Post Traumatic ◽

Discrimination And Oppression ◽

The Many ◽

Seismic Impact

Planetary health is a broad multidisciplinary effort that attempts to address what has been described as “Anthropocene Syndrome”—the wicked, interrelated challenges of our time. These include, but are not limited to, grotesque biodiversity losses, climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, the global burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), health inequalities, social injustices, erosion of wisdom and civility, together with the many structural underpinnings of these grand challenges. The ultimate aim of planetary health is flourishing along every link in the person, place and planet continuum. The events of “2020” have illuminated the consequences of “mass trauma” and how sub-threshold anxiety and/or depressive symptoms erase the rigid lines between mental “health” and mental “disorders”, and unmasked the systemic forms of injustice, discrimination, and oppression that have too often escaped discourse. Here, we query the ways in which post-traumatic growth research might inform the larger planetary health community, especially in the context of a global pandemic, broadening socioeconomic inequalities, a worsening climate crisis, and the rise of political authoritarianism. The available research would suggest that “2020” fulfills the trauma criteria of having a “seismic impact on the assumptive world”, and as such, provides fertile ground for post-traumatic growth. Among the many potential positive changes that might occur in response to trauma, we focus on the value of new awareness, perspective and greater wisdom.

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Community Resilience and the Principles of Mass Trauma Intervention

Psychiatry ◽

10.1521/psyc.2007.70.4.320 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 70 (4) ◽

pp. 320-328 ◽

Cited By ~ 64

Author(s):

Fran H. Norris ◽

Susan P. Stevens

Keyword(s):

Community Resilience ◽

Mass Trauma ◽

Trauma Intervention

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Affective Ties That Bind: Investigating the Affordances of Social Networking Sites for Commemoration of Traumatic Events

Social Science Computer Review ◽

10.1177/0894439318770960 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 333-354 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Yunya Song ◽

Ran Xu

Keyword(s):

Social Networking ◽

Social Networking Sites ◽

Traumatic Event ◽

Preferential Attachment ◽

Chinese History ◽

Geographic Proximity ◽

Data Set ◽

Mass Trauma ◽

Nanjing Massacre ◽

Negative Feelings

Social networking sites (SNSs) facilitate self-expression and promote social connections. There has been growing scholarly attention to the affect-charged collectivities created online in the aftermath of disasters and mass traumas. This study was designed to examine how individuals affiliate in SNS-based commemoration of a mass trauma, taking advantage of a large Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter) data set which captures users’ responses over 4 years to the anniversary of the Nanjing massacre, a major traumatic event in Chinese history. Machine learning–based content analysis was combined with dyadic-level network analysis to examine the content Weibo users create and the conversational structures they formed. The results reveal that homophily, geographic proximity, and preferential attachment work in tandem with displays of emotion to influence the formation of online conversational ties. Expressions of negative emotions were found to facilitate or inhibit the homophily effect. Being exposed to the display of anger amplifies the homophily effect among the users, while sadness weakens it. The findings point to the importance of examining specific emotions rather than global (positive–negative) feelings in understanding the dynamics of SNS-based interaction.

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Loss of loved ones or home due to a disaster: Effects over time on distress in immigrant ethnic minorities

Transcultural Psychiatry ◽

10.1177/1363461518784355 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 55 (5) ◽

pp. 648-668 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Geert E. Smid ◽

Annelieke N. Drogendijk ◽

Jeroen Knipscheer ◽

Paul A. Boelen ◽

Rolf J. Kleber

Keyword(s):

Ethnic Minority ◽

Ethnic Minorities ◽

Stressful Life Events ◽

Minority Groups ◽

Immigrant Status ◽

Latent Growth ◽

Mass Trauma ◽

Disaster Loss ◽

Increased Sensitivity ◽

Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Exposure to mass trauma may bring about increased sensitivity to new or ongoing stressors. It is unclear whether sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status may be affected by severe exposure to mass trauma. We examined whether the loss of loved ones or home due to a disaster is associated with more persistent disaster-related distress in ethnic minorities compared with Dutch natives in the Netherlands. In residents affected by a fireworks disaster ( N = 1029), we assessed disaster-related distress after 3 weeks, 18 months, and 4 years. The effects of loss of loved ones or home and ethnic minority/immigrant status on distress were analyzed using latent growth modeling. After controlling for age, gender, education, employment, and post-disaster stressful life events, the loss of loved ones was associated with more persistent disaster-related distress in ethnic minorities compared with natives at 18 months, and the loss of home was associated with more persistent disaster-related distress in ethnic minorities compared with natives between 18 months and 4 years. Our results suggest that the loss of loved ones may increase sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status during the early phase of adaptation to a disaster. Loss of home may lead to further resource loss and thereby increase sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status in the long term. Efforts to prevent stress-related psychopathology following mass trauma should specifically target ethnic minority groups, notably refugees and asylum seekers, who often experienced multiple losses of loved ones as well as their homes.

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