Culture and PTSD examines the applicability of PTSD to cultural contexts beyond Europe and North America and details local responses to trauma and how they vary from PTSD as defined by the American Psychiatric Association.

This book examines the social contexts in which trauma is created by those who study it, whether considering the way in which trauma afflicts groups, cultures, and nations, or the way in which trauma is transmitted down the generations. As Alford argues, ours has been called an age of trauma. Yet, neither trauma nor post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are scientific concepts. Trauma has been around forever, even if it was not called that. PTSD is the creation of a group of Vietnam veterans and psychiatrists, designed to help explain the veterans' suffering. This does not detract from the value of PTSD, but sets its historical and social context. The author also confronts the attempt to study trauma scientifically, exploring the use of technologies such as magnetic resonance imagining (MRI). Alford concludes that the scientific study of trauma often reflects a willed ignorance of traumatic experience. In the end, trauma is about suffering.

This work is a vital set of insights and guidelines that will contribute to more aware and meaningful practice for mental health professionals. Focusing equally on theoretical concepts, culturally valid assessment methods, and cultural adaptation in trauma and resilience, an array of experts present the cutting edge of research and strategies. Extended case studies illustrate an informative range of symptom profiles, comorbid conditions, and coping skills, as well as secondary traumas that can occur in asylum seekers.

This book, written and edited by leading experts from around the world, looks critically at how culture impacts on the way posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related disorders are diagnosed and treated. There have been important advances in clinical treatment and research on PTSD, partly as a result of researchers and clinicians increasingly taking into account how "culture matters." For mental health professionals who strive to respond to the needs of people from diverse cultures who have experienced traumatic events, this book is invaluable. It presents recent research and practical approaches on key topics, including: •How culture shapes mental health and recovery •How to integrate culture and context into PTSD theory •How trauma-related distress is experienced and expressed in different cultures, reflecting local values, idioms, and metaphors •How to integrate cultural dimensions into psychological interventions. Providing new theoretical insights as well as practical advice, it will be of interest to clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and other health professionals, as well as researchers and students engaged with mental health issues, both globally and locally. For mental health professionals who strive to respond to the needs of people from diverse cultures who have experienced traumatic events, this book is invaluable. It presents recent research and practical approaches on key topics, including: How culture shapes mental health and recovery How to integrate culture and context into PTSD theory How trauma-related distress is experienced and expressed in different cultures, reflecting local values, idioms, and metaphors How to integrate cultural dimensions into psychological interventions. Providing new theoretical insights as well as practical advice, it will be of interest to clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and other health professionals, as well as researchers and students engaged with mental health issues, both globally and locally.

This volume argues that there are serious problems inherent in current conceptualisations of how people react to trauma, and consequently in many of the therapeutic responses that have been developed.

This book provides an overview of recent trends in the management of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders that may ensue from distressing experiences associated with the process of migration. Although the symptoms induced by trauma are common to all cultures, their specific meaning and the strategies used to deal with them may be culture-specific. Consequently, cultural factors can play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with psychological reactions to extreme stress. This role is examined in detail, with an emphasis on the need for therapists to bear in mind that different cultures often have different concepts of health and disease and that cross-cultural communication is therefore essential in ensuring effective care of the immigrant patient. The therapist’s own intercultural skills are highlighted as being an important factor in the success of any treatment and specific care contexts and the global perspective are also discussed.

This lofty volume analyzes a circular cultural relationship: not only how trauma is reflected in cultural processes and products, but also how trauma itself acts as a critical shaper of literature, the visual and performing arts, architecture, and religion and mythmaking. The political power of trauma is seen through US, Israeli, and Japanese art forms as they reflect varied roles of perpetrator, victim, and witness. Traumatic complexities are traced from spirituality to movement, philosophy to trauma theory. And essays on authors such as Kafka, Plath, and Cormac McCarthy examine how narrative can blur the boundaries of personal and collective experience. Among the topics covered: Television: a traumatic culture. From Hiroshima to Fukushima: comics and animation as subversive agents of memory in Japan. The death of the witness in the era of testimony: Primo Levi and Georges Perec. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion. Placing collective trauma within its social context: the case of the 9/11 attacks. Killing the killer: rampage and gun rights as a syndrome. This volume appeals to multiple readerships including researchers and clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media researchers.

What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan who flees from his village in the mid-1980s and becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys. Valentino’s travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)–the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins. Based closely on true experiences, What Is the What is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.

This volume is a collection of original chapters by a group of authors at the leading UK research and treatment centre on PTSD dealing with the diagnosis and context of PTSD, psychological mechanisms and behaviour, and strategies for therapy and prevention. Drawing on ten years intensive experience with adults and children presenting with PTSD and other disorders following a series of disasters, Yule emphasises the cognitive behavioural approach to PTSD and integrates important perspectives from social psychology, experimental cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and developmental psychology. Cross-cultural issues and issues in planning emergency responses to disasters are discussed. The controversy surrounding various short term and crisis interventions is critically presented.

According to author Kirby Farrell, the concept of trauma has shaped some of the central narratives of the 1990s--from Vietnam war stories to the video farewells of Heaven's Gate cult members. In this unique study, Farrell explores the surprising uses of trauma as both an enabling fiction and an explanatory tool during periods of overwhelming cultural change.