Collective Trauma, Collective Healing: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster

Collective Trauma, Collective Healing is a guide for mental health and other professionals working in response to large-scale political violence or natural disaster. The book lays out current guidelines and best practices for psychosocial responses to various types of catastrophes. At the same time it establishes a framework that practitioners can use to develop their own community-based, collective approach to treating trauma and providing clinical services that are both contextually and culturally appropriate. Clinicians will come away from the book with a solid understanding of the new roles that health and mental health professionals play in disasters--roles that encourage them to recognize and enhance the resilience and coping skills in families, organizations, and the community at large. This book draws on experience working with survivors, their families and communities in the following contexts: Holocaust, Post-War Kosovo, the Liberian civil wars, and Post 9/11 Lower Manhattan. It is based on more than ten years of data collection, including more than 400 hours of video of community meetings and forums; peer support and discussion groups, arts and theater projects; youth programs; and disaster response workshops with mental health professionals. It also includes retrospective interviews with community members who participated in community-based recovery work, as well as interviews with leading professionals worldwide who are currently engaged in family and community resilience approaches to massive trauma.