What is Collective Trauma?
Collective trauma is the psychological distress that a group (usually an entire culture, community, or another large group of people) experiences in response to a shared trauma.
Common causes of collective trauma:
· War, occupation, and other military conflicts
· Terrorist attacks
· Pandemics and epidemics
· Recessions and depressions
· Genocide and religious persecution
· Racial trauma, misogyny, apartheid, and class-based violence
· Mass killings
· Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters
Effects of collective trauma on mental health
The impact of collective trauma can seep into our daily lives. And if we don’t know how to identify the effects, we won’t know how to heal. Some mental health conditions that can be caused by Collective Trauma are:
1. Psychological distress
2. Anxiety disorders
3. Low self-esteem
4. Existential crisis
5. Generational Trauma
How to heal from collective trauma
If you weren’t directly impacted by an event, you might not take the time to fully address your own experience of trauma, however, repressing trauma can negatively affect your mental and physical health. Here are a few ways to start healing from collective trauma:
1. Reach out for help.
2. Stop doom-scrolling. Resist the urge to stay on social media for hours at a time. It can make you feel more informed and connected in the short-term, but far more hopeless in the long term.
3. Look for the silver lining. Every community that’s experienced trauma has one thing in common — they develop resilience from it. Crises provide a disruption to the status quo. While we don’t look forward to them — or welcome the losses they bring — looking for the bright side is an important part of preserving our mental health as we move forward.
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