Question
What is collective trauma?
Answer
Collective trauma refers to a traumatic event that is experienced by a group, a community, or a society. A traumatic event can often cause long-term psychological symptoms within the group or community. In many cases, these psychological effects have a hand in shaping the society and community long after the traumatic event occurs. Of course, people within the group will also experience their own individual trauma. These individual trauma symptoms can also contribute to the experience of collective trauma.
There are different types of collective traumatic events. Wars, terror attacks, widespread poverty, hunger, and displacement, are some of the most common examples of collective traumatic events. Although, this is not by any means a comprehensive list. Events like these can create a feeling of instability and unsafety within the community or a group. Every society has experienced one of these events at some point in their history.
To go a little bit further into collective traumatic events, it is important to note that intergenerational and historical trauma are both categorized as a type of collective trauma/collective traumatic event.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Understanding and Treating Collective Trauma in the Age of Covid-19, presented by Tiffany Hall, MS, LMFT.
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