Collective Trauma is Real, and Could Hamper Australian Communities' Bushfire Recovery [medicalxpress.com]

Rafael Maravilla(PACEs Connection Staff) 2/18/2012:00 PM

By Erin Smith and Frederick M. Burkle, Medical Xpress, February 14, 2020

Most of us are probably familiar with the concept of psychological trauma, the impact on an individual's psyche caused by an extremely distressing event.

But there's another kind of trauma. A collective disturbance that occurs within a group of people when their world is suddenly upended.

Consider the Buffalo Creek flood of 1972, in which a dam burst at a West Virginia coalmine, inundating the town and killing 132 people. Visiting the region the year after the disaster, sociologist Kai Erikson noticed that in addition to ongoing personal trauma, there was a "collective trauma." The community as a whole appeared to be in a permanent state of shock.

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