Collective Trauma, Collective Healing: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster

This book tells the story of how a number of community based projects in response to collective trauma were carried out. It presents an iterative process of program development that is becoming a best practice in the field of psychosocial support. The basic ideas elaborated in this book are now being incorporated into the UN sponsored Handbook on Community-based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Humanitarian Emergencies.

More and more clinicians and community practitioners are developing the kinds of models presented in this book to address a range of mental health challenges not only in situations of collective trauma. The book has become a text book in many social work programs and post graduate certificate program in trauma studies (see program described in Saul and Simon 2016 on program at Columbia University). I am currently using the book as text in an international program I direct with Bilgi University Istanbul, and the International Organization for Migration certificate program in humanitarian response. I am being asked to present the work in major international conferences.

The other books that have come out recently on collective trauma and healing do not take a multi-systemic approach. They tend to incorporate such ideas into an individual clinical model and do not demonstrate how to work to strengthen resilience in families, communities and organizations.