When Bad Things Happen

2017

The prevalence of trauma is beginning to be recognised as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population health issue. Trauma in this context needs to be understood in a way that accounts for the experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Furthermore, the impact and contribution of trauma to many other problems in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is only starting to be acknowledged. Relevant types of trauma are those related to historical events with intergenerational and transgenerational impacts; trauma resulting from repeated exposure to life stressors; trauma resulting from specific, intense life experiences; and trauma arising from adverse childhood experiences including complex and developmental trauma. In clinical settings, this layering of trauma can present unique challenges to health and mental health professionals and workers. Community-level healing responses are also important. Trauma should be addressed as a significant Aborigina...

A relevant and helpful framework for assessing Aboriginal people with a traumatic past may include complex posttraumatic stress disorder or disorder of extreme stress not otherwise specified. In a study for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 127 case files were obtained from former students of Indian residential schools in British Columbia. A coding system was developed to systematically analyze a number of psychosocial and mental health problems. The Aboriginal people studied were found to have several risk factors for complex posttraumatic stress disorder and many mental health problems associated with complex trauma. These findings suggest that it may be useful to adapt a complex posttraumatic stress disorder framework when assessing mental health problems in Canadian Aboriginal people. The findings also suggest that further research is needed to offer more definite conclusions about the associations between residential school experiences and mental health problems.

Spiritual Psychology and Counseling

Book Review As if out of nowhere psychological trauma has become a commonly used term in everyday conversation. The fact that trauma on a collective level is so widely discussed today is itself a disclosure of not only vulnerability, but the precarious state, if not, spiritual crisis, of the modern world. It beckons the question, is there something triggering about the modern world itself that is creating these conditions? Or is it just a matter of a heightened awareness of trauma and historical trauma, known as transgenerational trauma or intergenerational trauma. There appears to be a deeper or underlying dimension pertaining to the mass traumatization of the present day that goes unnoticed, which is the trauma due to the loss of the sense of the sacred, what could be called the traumatization of secularism. The vacuum that has been created in the modern world due to the loss religion is not something that can be taken lightly, yet it is often unrecognized because of

Primary Health Care Research & Development, 2021

We aimed to understand support needs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex trauma.Becoming a parent is an exciting yet challenging transition, particularly for parents who have experienced past hurt in their own childhood which can have long lasting effects, including complex trauma. Complex trauma-related distress can make it harder to care for a baby, but the parenting transition offers unique opportunities for recovery. This formative research is part of a community-based participatory action research project which aims to co-design perinatal awareness, recognition, assessment and support strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex trauma. We used an Indigenist approach and grounded theory methods. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents who were pregnant and/or have children up to two years old were recruited through perinatal care services and community networks in three Australian sites (Alice Springs...

International Indigenous Policy Journal, 2021

Contemporary Indigenous mental health research is beginning to address colonization, contextualizing Indigenous health within a history of colonial relationships and inadequate mental health responses. In practice, however, dominant counselling models for mental health in Canada have neglected Indigenous perspectives and there is a paucity of research regarding interventions that address psychological trauma with Indigenous populations. We identified 11 Canadian studies that employed culturally appropriate trauma interventions within Indigenous communities. We discuss the findings in relation to the study participants, outcomes reported, and research design. Recommendations are provided to address the need for evidence-based trauma interventions that have efficacy for Indigenous people in Canada to address Indigenous historical trauma.

This paper introduces the phenomenon of inter-generational trauma in Indigenous individuals, families, and communities as a product of ongoing colonialism. Explored here, are some of the manifestations of inter-generational trauma as well as some of the mechanisms by which it is inherited. Inter-generational trauma is a form of inequality that especially affects Indigenous peoples globally that may be easily overlooked. Thus it is imperative in Indigenous-related research that inter-generational trauma be further accounted for and explored.

Qualitative health research, 2015

A large body of literature explores historical trauma or intergenerational trauma among Aboriginal communities around the globe. This literature connects contemporary forms of social suffering and health inequity to broader historical processes of colonization and the residential school systems in Canada. There are tendencies within this literature, however, to focus on individual pathology and victimization while minimizing notions of resilience or well-being. Through a social constructionist lens, this research examined how interpersonal responses to historical traumas can be intertwined with moments of and strategies for resilience. Detailed narrative interviews occurred with four Aboriginal Cree elders living in central Saskatchewan, Canada, who all experienced historical trauma to some extent. From this analysis, we argue that health research among Aboriginal populations must be sensitive to the complex individual and social realities that necessarily involve both processes of ...

Journal of the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet

Introduction Health outcomes and life expectancy of Indigenous people throughout the world are far poorer than non-Indigenous populations. Emerging evidence from research shows that many social issues which impact on Indigenous peoples globally is linked to trauma over generations. This review explores literature about Indigenous people from around the world to seek interventions which have been successful in healing intergenerational trauma. Method To identify interventions that have been successful in healing intergenerational trauma amongst Indigenous populations globally, a systematic search strategy was conducted using keywords and synonyms related to the topic. Peer reviewed academic literature was sourced from four different databases i.e. Ebscohost, PubMed, CINAHL and Medline. Results There were 89 citations, 55 were identified as relevant, after duplicate copies were removed. Of these 55 papers, 23 met inclusion/exclusion criteria. Two additional papers from a reference lis...

In Education, 2013

In this paper, we describe a perplexing pattern of behaviours in mature Aboriginal students in university studies who appear capable of being successful to complete course work, but fail due to incompletion of academic work. Despite numerous strategies to provide students with opportunities for success, these students' behaviours remain perplexing. Considering the prevalence of trauma (accident, violence, suicide) in the Aboriginal population and the intergenerational trauma of the residential school experience, we examine trauma-informed care principles and their adaption to educational systems as a potential strategy to mitigate this problem. A conceptual framework based on an Indigenous knowledge perspective of Four Lodges guides the discussion of this issue.

Journal of Holistic Nursing, 2020

Historical trauma refers to the collective depredations of the past that continue to affect populations in the present through intergenerational transmission. Indigenous people globally experience poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous people, but the connections between Indigenous people’s health and experiences of historical trauma are poorly understood. To clarify the scope of research activity on historical trauma related to Indigenous peoples’ health, we conducted a scoping review using Arksey and O’Malley’s method with Levac’s modifications. Seventy-five articles (1996-2020) were selected and analyzed. Key themes included (a) challenges of defining and measuring intergenerational transmission in historical trauma; (b) differentiating historical trauma from contemporary trauma; (c) role of racism, discrimination, and microaggression; (d) questing for resilience through enculturation, acculturation, and assimilation; and (e) addressing historical trauma through interventions...